Spectrum Beneath
by raining-down-hearts
Summary: Olivia Deering is a spy. She's been a spy since she was a baby, and as far as she knows, will be a spy forever. Then one mission, she becomes entangled with the infamous Star Clan, and then before she knows it, she's knee-deep undercover in the DWMA, but it seems her enemies are not what she first thought- and neither is she. (Part I of the story of Black Star's mother)
1. Chapter 1

** A/N:** Hi everyone! So this is my entry for Resbang 2013.

If you don't know what that is, go to my **profile**- Resbang is a Soul Eater fandom event in which authors write stories and wonderful artists make wonderful art for them. I've put a link in there to the Resbang masterpost, or main list of all the stories and art in one place, and I've ALSO got links on my profile to the fantastic art made specifically for THIS story, by some of basically the best people ever.

(note: the gorgeous cover art for this is by marshofsleep, and the link's in my profile!)

Now you should know that I was planning to write a much longer, more complete story, but time got away from me, so there WILL BE a sequel to this story. There are a lot of OC's at first, but this is the story of Black Star's mother and father and the fall of the Star Clan, so some familiar faces will appear after a while, and many more in the sequel.

This is something I worked very hard on, and it turned into something I'm rather proud of, so let me know what you think, and _have fun reading!_

* * *

He looked at her, apple-cheeked, dark of hair and eye, a smiling bubbling toddler sitting straight, waiting just for him, and had to hold back the urge to bury her alive.

"Olivia," he managed.

"Yes, daddy?" she chirped. So smart, already, and she loved him so much.

His mouth tasted like ashes and rage. "Would you like to help me?"

She tilted her head like a curious bird, shining shoes tapping at the floor. "Okay!"

Her hand was pudgy and hot in his. He thought of her mother's hand, cool and poisonous, and the eyes she'd given to their child, slanted and as dark as her witch's heart. "That's a good girl," he soothed absently as he led her to the elevator. "How have your lessons been going?"

She crinkled her delicate brow and then gave a little giggle as the elevator jolted. "Good. I got to paint a picture-"

He gritted his teeth. "Painting? You're supposed to be learning useful things." It came out harshly, too violently, and she cringed a little, trying to yank her hand out of his. He was so tired of pandering to her incessant selfish wants, her irrational and babyish ideas. She would be of no use to him if she grew up weak. He could not, would not, waste a gift like the one swimming in her genes, not after all he'd sacrificed to get it.

She watched him like a cornered animal, but then the elevator drifted to a stop and she perked back up as he led her into the labs. Everything fascinated her and he had to smack her hand away from several very expensive pieces of equipment.

"Take her," he barked at one of the lab rats, a wide-eyed woman with chewed-up pencils wobbling precariously behind both rather large ears. The woman pressed her lips together at his harsh tone, but picked Olivia up deftly and settled her on an examination table with a pat on the head. The girl accepted it all happily, still gazing all around, pink mouth open in fascination. He tried to see her as others did, a sweetly innocent child, but all he could picture was her mother's gilded fingertips weeping blue sparks. This girl held so much potential it was dizzying.

"Mr. Deering, sir?" the woman said hesitantly.

He snapped back and flapped a hand. "You know what to do. Be careful. If anything goes wrong I'm going to be very displeased."

The woman eyed him with far too much disdain. "Of course, sir," she said smoothly. One eyebrow lifted upwards a fraction before she managed to get it under control.

Olivia had caught something else, and she giggled, blinking up at him with ridiculously long lashes. "I'm important?"

"Of course you are, sweetie," the woman murmured, turning her back to him quite deliberately. "Now we're going to do some things, and they might pinch a little bit, but-" she paused, and he saw her shoulders hunch with vague amusement. "But you're going to be helping your daddy, and that's worth feeling funny for a bit, isn't it?" she continued, voice rather strained. What a bedside manner she had. It was too bad that the viruses she grew for him couldn't care less about such things.

Olivia considered that warily. "Do I get candy after?" she said hopefully, plucking at the flowery hem of her dress with chubby fingers. Such unspoiled infant innocence, veiling such power. It was almost beautiful to him. It was the same as the slick smooth shell of a grenade or the sweet odor of chloroform. One hand rose to brush her hair for a second, and she leaned into it before the big-eared woman distracted her with a poisonously blue lollipop, brandishing a glinting syringe behind her back.

Mr. Deering turned and walked away. His daughter called out for him after a moment, then, as he put his hand on the doorknob, she started to scream. He almost slammed the door in his haste to escape the sound. The witch's child, the test subject, the bright-eyed potential apocalypse, an entire body full of the most valuable blood there was- she might as well have been solid diamond. He rode the elevator back up to his office in a silent fury at nothing, fists clenched.

His secretary looked up. "Good morning, sir. Fresh coffee made."

"I don't want coffee," he snapped viciously. "Get me my schedule."

She was unperturbed. "Of course, sir." She never flinched at his shouts, which was half of why she was so valuable. He took his schedule from her roughly. She gave him a perfect, beautiful smile and sipped her own coffee, printing a rich pink lipstick stain on the rim of the mug, like fallen butterfly wings.

"How long has it been?" he said suddenly, drowning in all the myriad ways his life had gone wrong, even as he sat enthroned atop his fortune.

She raised a perfectly groomed brow at him. "Since?"

"Since we fought."

"Ah." She put the edge of her thumb against her front teeth, watching him carefully. When had she become so hesitant around him, so careful in her replies? The blonde, polished mane sliding across her suit jacket made a gentle swishing noise that went straight to his overworked heart, because if he was tired and lost and angry, what was she? "Years. Fifteen, I think."

"Transform," Mr. Deering commanded idly, a foolish whimsy, one that made the two bulky bodyguards standing like statues beside his doorway stiffen, but blue sparks were in his blood still and he had fought so hard for this filthy power. He might as well enjoy the fruits of his labors.

She gave him a secretive smile, the air shifted, gravity gave a great ripple, and then she was cold, cold metal in his hand, a wicked edge shining gently. "Just like old times," he lied.

"Yes, sir," she answered dutifully, in that distant impossible way he sometimes thought only he could hear. The sound of her voice came through as if from a long way off, but her eyes beamed hesitantly at him from within her blade.

"I have a meeting at noon with our manufacturers and then a conference call with Hong Kong at three," he mused, glancing down at the schedule still clutched in his free hand, wondering why his heart had sped up when there was no danger anywhere. "I expect reports from the Asia division on our profits well before then. I want to know how well that nerve gas is doing overseas. Oh, have them send up the specs for this year's AK-47 ammunition."

She flashed back into a woman and nodded calmly. He went into his office with his ears still ringing from the sound of all the people they'd killed together and absently signed a paper to authorize another purchase of smallpox samples. Not everyone in the world could become a weapon, not everyone could wield them, but the vast tentacles of his corporation stretched out far enough to fill the gaps and then some.

Thirteen floors below him, almost a quarter of a mile below the official basement of his building, his daughter shrieked and thrashed, wailing as only an abandoned child could do. She'd finally seen her daddy, after so many months of tiresome monotony, after endless days of running and studying and gymnastics, after so much loneliness and work, and then he had left her. She couldn't bear it, couldn't handle being all alone again in this awful smelling place, among all this unfriendly white and slick steel. Panic gave her little body strength as she flailed, and eventually the woman in the scary white coat had to physically hold her down. The sticky lollipop was long forgotten, stuck crookedly to the sheets.

The lady did sound sad, though, and the regret crumpling her face touched Olivia instinctively. "I'm so sorry, baby, I'm sorry," she whispered over and over, putting all her weight down on Olivia's arm to hold it still as she depressed the syringe.

Olivia sniffled wetly, reluctantly accepting the fact that she couldn't escape, and wished for her lollipop. "Um, can I have another?" she said fretfully. Something dropped over her eyes as the needle was pulled free, shadows sliding between her and everything else, and suddenly she was very sleepy.

So Olivia curled up tight on the chilly bed and whined wordlessly to herself as the big-eared lady stroked her hair, scratched out notes with her other hand, and wondered, heartsick, if she'd been weak to be lured in by an overlarge paycheck and loose regulations. The shimmer of the brand-new centrifuge in the corner was alluring, but it wasn't as bright as the tiny girl's dark, teary eyes.

* * *

The waiting room outside her father's office was cold in every way possible. She sat as straight as she could in the leather-backed chair, wishing her thighs weren't sticking to it with nervous sweat, wishing that she had a magazine or enough bravery take a nap, anything to break this dreadful monotony. She stuck a finger in her mouth and started nibbling on a nail, swinging her feet, which didn't quite touch the floor, but the oppressive atmosphere soon stilled her back down. The click-clack of typing slowed and his secretary turned a fierce eye on her for a moment; Olivia gulped and looked at her knees. The woman was an icy blonde shrew who, quite clearly, hated everything and everyone, and beyond that particular unwelcoming feature, this place was nothing but dark wood walls and darker furniture, leather and glass and sharp angles, ferociously masculine. It was always unnaturally clean, too, every surface wafting the faint scents of lemon and furniture wax into the air. Nothing seemed touchable; she was afraid her fingertips would be eaten away if she did. Finally her father buzzed her in, and she pulled the intercom from her last mission out of her pocket and tossed it down on his oversize desk.

He raised dark brows, looking impeccable as always in his bespoke suit. His tie was navy silk today, dotted rather hypnotically with geometric silver triangles. "Hello, Olivia, it's nice to see you too."

Here, wrapped in a temperamental purr, was danger, and she fell back a little, very glad that the bulk of his desk was between them. "I'm sorry. Um, it's just there was a problem with this-" she pointed at the transmitter, carefully focusing her gaze somewhere on his chest, rather than his eyes- "And they won't listen to me in electronics. They're saying it's fine and it's ready for production."

"And you're saying it's not?" he said silkily, a panther about to pounce.

"I- I-"

"Don't waste my time."

She quailed. "It's not. Ready, I mean, it's got a problem."

He hummed. She relaxed a little. It appeared she was going to survive this particular encounter unscathed, but then- "A problem that you found during your mission. Which means something went wrong." The last word was severe, auditory acid, and her mouth went dry.

"Um, well, I got the files you wanted from them, I mean, it was successful," she tried.

Her father snorted. She moistened her lips with her tongue and wished that his casual inattention to her small victories didn't make her chest ache so much. This time, she'd gone above and beyond, had actually taken the time to sabotage her mark's mainframe too before leaving, hoping he'd be proud of her, but that had been a stupid idea. She watched silently as he picked up the little intercom and turned it over in slim soft fingers. "What happened?"

"It's too big, for one, and there's no upper volume limit. It hit some kind of interference when I crossed their security border and started shrieking, they had a scrambler just for things like this. I nearly went deaf and then I nearly got my arm taken off when it blew my cover," she blurted eagerly. "But I got everything you wanted."

"Ah," he said mildly, looking at the miniscule chunk of beige plastic as though it had personally betrayed him. Olivia knew that look. Someone was getting fired for such an obvious oversight. "I'll send it in for redesign."

"Okay," she breathed. If he listened to her about anything, it was the field performance of the company's products. She rubbed her bicep, where a fresh wound was scabbing, pulling itchily on her skin.

He caught the motion instantly. "You were wounded?"

"Um- it's not bad," she hedged squeakily, twisting her fingers together and picking at her cuticles. Her fight was long gone, drained out of her with the first cool sweep of his gaze across her.

"Is it going to scar?" he asked harshly.

She swallowed down her nausea and focused on her reflection in the glassy mahogany of his desk. "Yes."

Her father sighed and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. "In a highly visible place. You know the drill." She fidgeted, but nodded; the routine the girls in the bio lab had devised for erasing scars was effective, but painful. He steepled his fingers and watched her with dark sly eyes. Olivia tensed. "It's your birthday in a week, isn't it?"

Her heart jumped to her throat and she had to cough before she could speak. "Uh- yes. Yes."

"I'll be in Tokyo, but happy birthday. I love you."

She brightened, toes curling in pleasure. "I love you too."

"You're scheduled for another blood draw tonight," he informed her, a clear dismissal, already turning back to his paperwork. She smiled a little, nodded, and showed herself out. His secretary smirked at her and Olivia, in a fit of pique, made certain to knock over the woman's trash can as she left the room. It was a silly, childish move, and she would probably pay for it the next time she had to sit in the waiting room, but it made her feel a little better nonetheless.

That night, she lay helpless and mildly sedated on a cold laboratory table in the depths of her father's corporate headquarters, watching from under scratchy, drooping lids as her blood wove crimson through dangling plastic tubing. This time, they carved a little flap of skin off her hip, too, swabbed the inside of her cheek roughly and took a clipping of her hair. She bore it without much thought, mostly grateful that they weren't campaigning again to test her regenerative powers. A week later, she turned thirteen, and only Janie the phlebotomist remembered. Olivia wandered into the research wing looking for a prosthetic nose and a better atomized paralytic spray when Janie popped out from a corner, waving a lopsided chocolate cake and grinning madly, apparently entirely unaware of the mysterious yellow liquid splashed vividly across her lab coat.

"You made me a cake," Olivia said dumbly. All she could do was stare and battle the burning flush climbing her cheeks.

"Of course I did, honey," Janie said happily as a stethoscope fell from her pocket and clanked onto the linoleum. She thrust the wobbling cake forward insistently. "Here. You like chocolate, right?"

"Yes," Olivia whispered. She didn't, really. It didn't matter. She felt funny, like there was helium in her belly, and it was pleasant, but it was also strange. "I've never had a birthday cake before."

"What? Seriously?" Janie asked with a lift of her eyebrows. It made the pencils stuck behind each ear lift dangerously. "I should have made you one years ago," she muttered to herself, then, "Come on. Let's eat."

They hid like errant schoolchildren in an empty room and ate with their fingers until they were sick, giggling quietly, surrounded by the cobalt glow of refrigerators bearing tray upon tray of petri dishes. Three days later, Janie slipped and sliced a hole through all three of her gloves, contracted a modified strain of ebola from one of those petri dishes, and passed while Olivia was away on a mission.

* * *

As Janie lay in quarantine, skin and organs slipping off and out of her, she managed to spare a few worried, fevered thoughts for Olivia before dying. Olivia surely could have used the support at the moment. This mission, out of ammunition from her earlier assault on the building, unarmed but for her knives and bare hands, she had no choice, no other option but to kill with her bare hands. She couldn't slip poison into someone's drink or shoot them from a distance this time. She had to use her blade and end it, or the mission would fail, her father would punish her, and beyond that, Olivia herself might die. She couldn't do it, though. She tried. She tried, and tried, but her body wouldn't obey past the fizzing panicked anguish fogging her head, even as the woman pinned beneath her whimpered and squirmed in tortured desperation. It was only when Olivia heard footsteps in the hall that she managed to drag her blade across the woman's neck. The strength needed to do so surprised her. It left a gaping scarlet smile, obscene below the twisted terror on the woman's face, and even though Olivia only saw it for a moment before springing out the window and flipping below the balcony into the garden, she couldn't breathe. Her lungs collapsed into cruel vacuums and she scuttled like a spider into the cover of an azalea where she curled up and wheezed desperately, wiping her gloved hands over and over onto the leaves.

Then the transmitter tucked into her ear, smaller and now equipped with a maximum volume limit, gave a crackling sputter. "Blacktail. Come in. Come in. What's taking so long?"

She leaned over and vomited. Her bile looked almost fresh and clean after the sickening crimson wave of the woman's blood. "I can't," she moaned. There were shouts above her, already, and every second she spent here was another second she could be discovered, could be killed or captured, but nothing on her body would move. She wasn't even sure her heart was still beating.

"Are you wounded?" came the familiar voice in her ear, strong and soothing. It was confident, careful, and she latched onto it with a stunted whimper.

"No," she managed, eyes clenched shut. "I can't. I can't."

"Shit," came a distant curse, then, "You need to move. There are four security guards closing in on your position right fucking now, eta two minutes, I'm in on their channel and they're heavily armed. Get on your feet!"

"I can't," she said again.

The voice was merciless. "Get on your feet or you die."

Her abused veins were burning, or maybe she was drowning in her victim's blood and her father's scornful gaze, she didn't know, but the voice stayed steady in her ear and she rose to her feet somehow, dashing out of the azalea and heading for the streets after clambering up and over a mossy stone wall. She had been ineffective, clumsy; she was drenched in tell-tale scarlet. Stifling self-loathing settled over her. "Help me," she wailed in scared shame to her contact, ducking into an alley and huddling between two dumpsters, uncaring of the oversweet stench of rotten food. "I'm- I need a disguise. What do I do?"

"You need a damn decon shower," came an amused voice, but it wasn't in her ear anymore, it was right in front of her. She blinked up at the man she'd only ever heard, her guardian angel fallen to earth and made terrible flesh. He was far too tall, too skinny, too pale, ghastly skin stretched painfully tight over beautiful arching bones, one eye burning down at her. The other was covered by some kind of headband, but she wasn't fooled. It was still watching her.

"Midori?" she hissed, one hand going to the butt of her gun by instinct and nothing else, because there wasn't a thing beyond queasy fear going on in her head. Nevermind that the thing was empty. It was still comforting.

"The one and only." He wrapped a blazing skeletal hand around her arm and yanked her upright. "Come on, girlie, we really need to get out of here." His voice was as otherwordly as his gaze, a low, landslide rumble, with a hint of an accent pulling at the edges. They ran. She had to take two or three steps for every one of his to keep up as they darted in and out of winding back streets. Sirens keened in the distance, but they made their way steadily further from the sound, and at last, after an eternity, after her mouth was full of thick slimy spit and her muscles screaming, he ducked under a decrepit bridge and let her stop.

"Thank you," she squeaked once she could breathe again, bent over with her hands on her knees.

He squinted at her, folded nearly in half, far too tall to stand under the bridge, though she could stretch entirely upright. "Thought you'd be older."

"Really?" That pleased her a bit.

"Yeah. God, you're a baby." The words were critical, but his tone was entirely approving, and she perked up some, but then the solid weirdness of talking face-to-face with a person she'd only ever heard while killing someone hit her and she shuffled her feet.

"Um. So you're Midori," she said, feeling a little awkward. He'd been her intelligence backup on two previous missions, and he'd given firmly useful advice, guiding her past obstacles and into position without a wasted syllable. Somehow she'd thought he was younger, different, not this twisted hulking one-eyed thing. Probably it was his wildly informal diction. Despite the fledgling wrinkles forming on his face, he wasn't even winded, but she was panting and clutching her ribs still. The thought came to her that her father wouldn't have lasted a block, running with them.

Midori lifted a brow. "Yep. So you're-"

"Olivia," she said, cutting him off before he could call her by her codename. It was so strange, how foreign this tall man still seemed. Sometimes her support received a photo of her, but not usually; generally they tracked her from a distance via a device in her watch or an earring or something else while monitoring whatever needed to be monitored. Her father wanted her face to stay as secret as possible for as long as possible. The fewer people out there who know who she was, the more effective she could be undercover.

He grimaced a little, wide rubbery mouth twisting. "Aw, shit. I didn't need to know that."

"But you saved my life," she protested, a little hurt, even as she realized her gesture had gone against every single piece of training she'd ever received.

He stared at her like she'd just grown another head. "You do realize that if you'd died the entire mission would have been compromised and I wouldn't have gotten paid?"

"Oh." Of course. What an idiot she'd been. The adrenaline rush of her escape faded, and the bubbling gurgle of the woman whose throat she'd slit came back full force.

"Are you going to puke again? I heard you the first time, that's evidence left," Midori asked, frowning like a gargoyle as he loomed over her. Nonetheless, he slapped her on the shoulder in what she suspected was meant to be a comforting pat.

"No," she said sharply, but then, as she caught the rich copper smell of blood again, "I was messy, I was bad, I didn't- I killed her, but-" Her windpipe closed off in sympathetic terror as she thought of the woman again. She didn't think she'd ever forget. How could ending a life with her hands be so different than with a gun? It was the same, wasn't it? The mark always ended up dead because of her. Yet this was clearly, obviously not the same thing at all. It was worlds away from anything she'd done before.

He grunted and did that awkward shoulder smack again. "It's never nice, but the first time's always the worst. You definitely fucked up, though, I gotta say."

She stared at the ground, wishing she could shuck her gory coat, but the less evidence left behind the better. "We should probably go," she said quietly.

"Mm, good point. Come on." With that, he was off, so fast that it almost seemed like he'd simply disappeared, and she stumbled after him. As they resumed running, she came back to herself a little, and she glanced sideways at him, memorizing his features even though he was so distinctively formed that she doubted he could ever be forgotten. It was probably why he specialized in intelligence and technology rather than actual field work; he would stand out far too much to anyone who even remotely knew what he looked like. She shot sideways glances his shaven head, the loose dark clothing he wore, the well-worn holster around his hips, packing his guns, and then her eyes locked on the proud black star inked into his bicep.

She knew that sigil, and she had to bite back a gasp and nearly tripped right onto her face. He turned his head and met her eyes with his own good one.

"See something you like?" he teased gently, but he yanked the sleeve of his shirt further down. She blushed furiously, focused her eyes forward, and tried to run faster, but he kept up easily, shaking his head mournfully at her efforts and never once getting out of breath. She'd thought her cardio routine was more than adequate, but apparently not.

Eventually, after an impossible stumbling decade in which she was fairly certain she would die of pure exhaustion, she reached her evacuation point far outside the city and they parted. He slipped away like a fish into the depths, quickly and silently with nothing more than an irreverent wave. Sitting safely in her father's corporate car and headed to the airport, though, she heard a crackle in her ear and then, "Good work, girlie."

That was it, three little words, but it was the most she'd ever gotten, and she leaned her face against the cold glass of the window and let it freeze her joyful tears.

* * *

The new phlebotomist, Janie's replacement, kept rolling her veins; finally Oliva took the needle and did it herself. It hurt less that way. She watched them take her blood away and hopped off the table, one finger pressed to the cotton pad over the needle prick, and reached for a bundle of scratchy bluish gauze to wrap it with.

"Here, let me," said the phlebotomist, a middle-aged man with far too much extra weight around his middle. He smiled at her, but it was patently false. She gritted her teeth, swallowing hard, and let the burgeoning flutters Midori's words had put in her stomach multiply before yanking her arm away.

"You should get better at your job if you want to stick around here," she said coldly, watching his flabby sweating face drip into something almost fearful. It felt good, it tasted strangely sweet, and she kept her eyes on him as she finished wrapping her arm. Maybe if she got tougher, if she adopted some of Midori's insouciant, lethal confidence, he would tell her she'd done a good job again someday. She pretended she was tall and terrifying. "Tell me what you're developing with my blood," she commanded, suddenly, and the wicked glee of her own mad daring was heady. Midori had been proud of her. The memory put steel into her spine that it had never had before.

The fat man's jowls quivered. "That's classified-"

"Do you really think that I, of all people, don't have clearance?" she bluffed, reaching for calm, reaching for bold even as her heart pounded away. She had no idea if it was working, but judging by the overly rapid blinking of his eyes, it was. She leaned closer. What would her father say to someone wasting his time? She thought about it, thought about the deep ominous drop his voice took when he was about to start a business negotiation, and the razor-sharp impatience of his secretary. "I strongly suggest that you don't try my patience."

The fat man opened his mouth as if he were about to give in, flicked his gaze to the right, but then snapped his jaw shut decisively and shook his head, glancing down at her in a way that suggested he had only just remembered she was thirteen. "No, sorry. I can't do that." He spun around and hunched away, bearing the sloshing bag full of her blood, and she regarded his back in severe disappointment as he left. Then, alone, she turned to follow the direction his eyes had looked. There was a hallway there, with four doors. She knew where the first three went; she'd entered them often enough over the years. But the last- she hopped off the table, approached it, and jiggled the handle.

It was locked, and the security keypad beside sported the unusual extra measure of a fingerprint analysis pad, instead of just a four-digit pass code. Dour satisfaction washed over her. She knew where the secrets of her blood were being hidden now, and she would bide her time, and when the moment came, she would find out what they were using her for and why her earliest memories were screams and needles.

The high of her nearly successful little probe lasted until she was almost asleep that night, drowsing in a puddle of cold azure moonlight slashed through into slivers by the bars on her bulletproof window. Something brought her snapping to full consciousness, nothing concrete, not a noise or something seen, but the buzzing of her nerves told her in no uncertain terms that something was wrong as she fumbled under her pillow for her gun.

She reached over to her bedside table and flicked on the light, narrowing her eyes carefully as they adjusted, and crouched on her bed with her back to the wall. "Who's there?" she rasped airlessly, leveling her pistol at the empty room, wetting her lips with a nervous tongue.

There was nothing. The security system guarding her door and window was still blinking a reassuring green, and there were no other possible entry points at all, no way in via vents or crawl spaces or anything. She was being foolish. This awful day had rattled her nerves. What would her father say, to see her acting so paranoid? And so soon after she'd resolved to be stronger. Shame curdled her stomach, but there was still something, a feeling, not unlike the prickling on the nape of her neck that told her she was being watched, but stronger, darker. She licked her lips again and then movement caught her eye. In the split second that she looked, the bare moment before her finger would have tightened on the trigger, the awful impossibility of what she was seeing froze her in silently howling panic.

Her full-length mirror, propped on the wall opposite her, was no longer empty. The woman with the second scarlet smile opened up in her throat was there, wispy and white and dead, but her eyes were very alive, and they were looking directly at Olivia.

Tears forced themselves out painfully, helplessly, pure horror tracing stinging tracks down her cheeks as she shook. The woman didn't move, but she didn't go away, and the longer she stood there staring the more Oliva felt something vital tearing in her mind. At last, she somehow began to pull the trigger, so slowly that in a distant corner of her thoughts she wondered if she would simply collapse, dead, from the effort of it, but then the woman blurred at the edges and a heartbeat later, it was only Oliva's own face reflected back at her, blanched and terrible.

She sighed convulsively and sank down onto her bed, dropping the gun to claw at her head, but then the prickling eerie sizzle came back to her skin and she looked back up at the mirror. Olivia herself was crouched on her bed, hands halfway raised, but her reflection was standing casually, arms crossed, regarding her with slit eyes.

Olivia yelped, scrabbled for the gun again and this time, she managed to shoot. The mirror shattered into a thousand shards and she collapsed, only now aware that she had hardly been breathing. Her entire body felt like it had been turned inside out. She stared at the bits of mirror, sucking in air. No one came; the perimeters of her room hadn't been breached, and her gun had a top-notch silencer attached. She was alone, except how could she ever, ever trust that she was alone ever again? Her heart was going to explode right out of her chest. She wiped angrily at the tears still leaking down her face and reached out gingerly to snatch one of the larger pieces of mirror from her floor.

It was just a mirror. She saw only her own face, still bloodless, and the naive cowardly youth looking back at her made her cry harder.

* * *

"Um. You looped the security tape, right?"

"Course. This isn't my first rodeo, girlie." Midori sounded only mildly irritated in her ear, but she knew she was pushing her limits, grilling him so about his half of the job. She couldn't seem to help it, though.

"So I'm good then? You'll-"

"I'll tell you when to move, yes, Jesus Christ. Not gonna be long either, so get ready."

"Okay," she said drearily, picking at a peeling shred of skin on her lower lip and hunching her shoulders as a trickle of rain made it through a hole in her carefully ragged umbrella and down into the collar of her jacket. Waiting was hard and sometimes she felt like it was all she ever did. A taxi came by, too fast, and she only just hopped out of the way of the wave it threw onto the sidewalk.

A distant, thoughtful hum, then, "Go. Ten minutes max at the front desk. You'll have thirty seconds for each camera in the halls so walk fast. Got it?"

"All right," she murmured, already in motion. She shook out her umbrella and gave a gusty sigh, flicking water droplets from her coat, as she approached the rather pasty redhead working the front desk. The woman had hair teased to high heaven, Texas pageant hair, defying all known physics in a way that was actually rather impressive.

"Hi, can I help you?" she asked, with an overly bleached and firmly insincere grin. It looked as if her face was sore from smiling all day.

Oliva folded her umbrella and smiled back. She thought about Janie, all bubbling fizzing energy, authentic and true, and said cheerfully, "Hi! I'm here to see Mr. Klein, please, I'm his niece. I'm just in town for a few hours and my parents wanted me to come see him."

The redhead blinked. It was apparent she had never even considered her boss having family of any sort, but she said, entirely naturally, "Sure thing, hang on just a sec." She pressed a button and pushed the microphone on her headset closer to her mouth with one pale finger.

Olivia leaned on the counter and tried to look young and nonthreatening, concentrating on bringing her smile up to her eyes, just the way her acting coach Maria had taught her. "Can you tell him it's Eve? I have six sisters so-" then she shrugged and chuckled.

"Wow, six?" the redhead laughed, and then, "Hello, Mr. Klein, you have a visitor. Your niece Eve." Olivia waited as patiently as she could. The redhead's eyebrow shot up. "Ah, yes, sir. Eve."

Olivia nodded encouragingly. That codeword would no doubt have him just about ready to jump out his window- if he were as stupid as her father had said he was, anyway. The redhead listened with slowly widening eyes to whatever her boss was saying, and then turned hesitantly toward Olivia.

"He's expecting you. I'll buzz you right up. Tenth floor, room forty-nine, okay?" she said stoutly, with only a shadow of fear in her voice.

Olivia put on a catlike grin, the one her father used when he destroyed companies. "Thank you so much," she said. Her voice was far too sweet. "So, what happened today?"

The redhead was obviously confused, head tilting. "I- I don't- pardon?"

"I said," Olivia repeated, dropping her voice an octave, "What happened today?"

"Well-" then the redhead got it. "Oh. Nothing. Nothing happened. No one was here?"

It came out as a question, and Olivia answered with a gentle nod before pushing off from the counter she'd been leaning on and strolling toward the elevator. In her ear, Midori said, "Eight minutes, seventeen seconds. Nice work. I cleared her phone records too."

"Cool," she said mildly. The elevator hummed and whirred as it rose, and she grimaced at the tinny music playing just softly enough that she kept accidentally straining to hear it.

"So? What's new?" Midori asked, sounding unbelievably bored.

She snorted and settled her hips back against the wall, watching the numbers above the door climb with a fingertip between her nibbling teeth. "Um. Running more. I've got my mile time down to five twenty-three," she answered casually. Inside she waited with bated breath.

"Nice."

Her spirit soared and the ache of her calves was entirely worthwhile. "You?" she said, a bit timidly. It seemed he was in a talkative mood today, though, and she was rabidly curious about what exactly a member of the most successful mercenary clan to come out of the Asian continent for over three decades did in his daily life.

An exasperated huff in her ear, thunderous over the transmitter. "I've been training this absolute idiot kid, the boss' little brother. I fucking hate him. I wanna throat punch him until he stops moving." She giggled helplessly at that image, one hand over her mouth, and then the elevator dinged and the door slid open. "Go get 'em," Midori told her before going silent.

She strode out, very fast, checking the signs posted on the wall to confirm that she was heading the right way. The halls were silent as a tomb, lushly carpeted in floral maroon, and there were no windows anywhere that she could see. The security cameras eyed her sternly as she went by, and she made a face at one of them.

"I saw that," Midori spat gruffly. The next camera she passed got a rather rude gesture he'd taught her during their last mission, in which she'd ended up posing as a Bangkok street urchin, and he choked a little before breaking out into guffaws. She grinned at nothing and practically skipped the rest of the way to room forty-nine.

The door she flung open with a theatrical bang, and there was Hans Klein, all alone, pale and perspiring and vulnerable, facing twitching in an effort to look stern and competent. "You're a fool," she told him in her father's voice. Her gun was heavy and reassuring against the small of her back.

He raised his hands placatingly, swallowing visibly. "Listen, I don't know what this is all about, but Eve was unnecessary, I've held up my end of the bargain with Cascadia, and-"

She prowled closer and watched the muscles jump in his temples. "Have you? That's funny. That's not what Mr. Deering told me."

Klein's boxy face turned a rather interesting shade of purple and he stood up to keep his desk between them as she rounded the corner of it. "It's the truth. I didn't sell any of the viruses. You can look at all my records if you want. I have proof!"

She rolled her eyes dramatically, shook a chiding finger at Klein, mostly for the benefit of the little silver camera watching her beadily from the corner. In her ear, she heard stifled laughter. "I believe you," she said gently.

Klein immediately dropped into a chair, panting as if he'd been running for his life. She watched his ill-fitting suit rumple with vague distaste. "Oh, thank god," he muttered, running his hands through his hair. "Listen, tell Deering that-"

"Mr. Deering," she correctly instantly, scowling, all the play leaving her at such disrespect.

He squinted at her and licked his lips. "Okay, tell Mr. Deering that everything's square, all right?" She didn't say anything, and it appeared to bolster his confidence, because he stood back up, pointed a finger at her, and started to bluster. "Anyway, you're just a kid. What was he thinking? I could have had you killed before you even got in here if I'd wanted, he shouldn't have sent a baby in to try and scare me!" Lies upon lies, and insults piled on top. His security was atrocious and he was so confident in his ability to sweet talk his way out of any situation that he'd allowed her up to his private sanctum, even warned by the codeword. Then again, if he had run or mounted an offense, he would have been killed anyway, so maybe he'd made the right choice, taking his chances. But he was disgusting and, to be entirely honest, she was a tad mystified as to how he'd ever gotten this far up the ladder in the first place.

She smiled in a way stolen from someone she didn't quite remember, as cruel and beautiful as a tsunami, and from her transmitter came an approving cough that made her heart sing. "I believe that you didn't sell them. However, you didn't destroy them, which was the other part of the deal. I may be young but I'm not an idiot, Mr. Klein."

He was very still, and regret traced fearful lines of sweat down his shiny face. "Of course I did," he stammered, then, in a desperate bid to buy time, "Look, I'll take you down to my researchers, you can look for yourself! They're not there!"

The drowned-woman smile stayed tight and wide on her lips. "No."

She killed him with a single gunshot, and it was a vicious relief to watch him bleed out from a safe distance. Her palms were hideously sweaty and she wiped them absently on her jeans before pulling a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket, slipping them on, and sitting down at his desk. He was more of a moron than anyone had suspected; the files on his viral experiments were right there in his top drawer, unlocked and unprotected, Cascadia Security Incorporated's teardrop logo proud and bold in the upper corner. She scooped them up, slipped them into her jacket, and stepped fastidiously over the pooling blood on her way out of the room.

"So," Midori said slowly. His voice was strangely hesitant, and she tightened, wondering what bad news he was about to dish out. Had that redhead called the police? "Mr. Deering runs Cascadia, no?"

She frowned, walking faster down the halls. "Um, yes, why?"

"Deering. Deer. And you're Blacktail."

She stopped stock still and proceeded to yank on her hair for a few moments before she could get her feet moving again, not looking at the cameras. "And?"

"Well, shit, girlie, do I have to spell it out?" he sighed raspily. He muttered something else she couldn't understand. It sounded both vile and Japanese.

Olivia nearly dove into the elevator and smashed the ground floor button ferociously. "He's very important to me. It's sort of a tribute," she settled on.

Midori grunted disbelievingly. "Really," he said flatly.

"Really," she confirmed, crossing her fingers subtly. She'd been given that stupid codename; it wasn't her fault. Her father couldn't be angry if Midori started asking questions, she thought frantically, knowing deep down that he could and would. She had to throw Midori off the trail. How, though? Her mind raced as she crammed her knuckles into her mouth. Midori was blunt to a fault and had a nose for lies like a bloodhound. Only one thing could sway him from sharing this juicy new hunch about her lineage with his clan.

She cringed. Truth was heavy and uncomfortable on her tongue as she said, "Okay. You're right. It's nothing but the past, though, and he didn't give me his last name. I don't legally have one. I've been off the record since I was born. No social security, not a paper trail anywhere in the world." Her breath caught. "I've never been to a school or signed anything, ever. I don't-" Her lungs grew tighter. "I don't exist. I don't. It's nothing. I'm nothing."

"Aw, shit," Midori whispered. "Don't cry, girlie, I hate that weepy crap."

She raised surprised hands to her face and then, hating her weakness, scrubbed mercilessly. When she strode past the redhead, her face was stern and clean, and if she cried when she was back outside, well, it was still raining and her umbrella was leaky and it was only natural for her face to be wet. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment, keeping her head down and lifting her scarf up a bit so that passerby on the street wouldn't wonder at someone talking to herself. "That was- um, unprofessional."

A rumbling breath. "Only a fool trips on what's behind him," Midori said at last. "And you're no fool, Blacktail."

She smiled damply into her hand.


	2. Chapter 2

"I can't do it!"

Maria put her hands on her lush hips and glowered stormily. "Oh yes you can, and we're going to keep at it until you figure it out."

Olivia put her face in her hands, so frustrated that she felt like she might vibrate out of her skin. "I can't, I can't just trigger a- a biological function! It's, um, involuntary! It's like a heartbeat, I-"

"Stop making excuses and try again," Maria barked. Drill sergeants across the world would fear her when she was like this. Olivia sighed angrily and concentrated.

Nothing happened, just as she'd expected. She raised her hands, palms up, and shrugged in exasperation. "Nothing. Eyes as dry as the Sahara."

Her smart mouth got her a good smack in the side of the head. She only just held back a snarl. Maria lifted her chin with an unmerciful finger and examined her face with snapping dark eyes, lips pressed into one thin furious line. "You aren't even trying," she said eventually.

Oliva was fairly certain she was going to combust from the effort of bottling up her resentment at such outrageous lies. "I am so," she whispered, heat rising to her face.

Maria snorted and whirled around, marching off and waving her arms with characteristic flamboyance, the jingle of her many bracelets a raucous punctuation to her movements. "You think your silly little trembling lip will fool the god of death and destruction?" she shouted to the ceiling before falling to her knees. "I try so hard and you give me nothing!"

Olivia bit the inside of her cheek. The woman was clearly insane. "First of all, what? And I do try," she said sulkily.

Maria turned back to her, slowly, eyes sly. "Don't tell me your daddy hasn't told you his fancy plan for you next year? Fourteen is such a special age." She let the words loose silkily and rose up like a wildfire, stalking close. "He hasn't," she said a moment later, savage delight clear on her face. "Oh, Olivia, darling. He really hasn't told you."

"Um- I don't- told me what?" Olivia said, spinning as Maria circled her in an effort to keep the woman in plain sight. No one was as quick with a pinch as Maria.

"Mmm. Well. I'm not surprised. He doesn't tell you much of anything, does he?"

There were black eyes everywhere in Olivia's life, depthless and infinite, haunting her mirror and her missions, and she wanted to rip them all out. She brought up Midori's wraithlike bulk and said, with as much nonchalant disinterest as she could manage, "Mr. Deering tells me exactly what I need to know and no more, and if he hasn't told me, then I don't think he would be too happy to learn you've taken that job upon yourself unauthorized." Nonetheless, she was curious, because there was only one death god in the world, and the world knew that he lived in Nevada. Surely it was just another of the woman's flowery overwrought rantings.

One of Maria's brows twitched upwards. "Is that so?" she hummed. A predatory smile curved her lips. "Are you going to run to daddy and tattle on me, then? I see now how you've survived for so long." She stepped closer and yanked on Olivia's ear harshly, bringing it closer. "The moment he hired me I knew you were weak. You're still weak, but now I see why you're not dead and rotten on the side of the road. Every time something backfires you run to your father to save you, like a helpless little baby."

Olivia shut her eyes as tightly as she could, clamping a hand over her mouth. "That's a lie," she managed. Her fury had been replaced by cold uncertain humiliation. Wasn't it true, though? She relied on guns and the creations of Cascadia to keep her alive, and the one time she'd had to handle things with her own two hands, she'd collapsed into a crying snotty heap. Her contact had had to come save her, rescue her, and then on top of everything she'd vomited and left DNA at the scene, a fact she hadn't dared to share with her father yet. She'd told a deadly ninja, a ninja whose very age spoke to his canny instincts, her name, and then her parentage, and it was unforgivable.

"It's no lie," Maria said into her ear, nails dug deep into Olivia's shoulder. "It's the truth and you know it, little girl, little weakling." She gave a good shake and then let go, sneering. "Pathetic." Even as she curled her lip she was lovely, and Olivia looked down at her own shredded hands, her nearly nonexistent nails, the callouses thickening her fingers, the intricate map of needle tracks tucked into her elbow. She bowed her head as her stomach grew hot and rancid, and she knew that she should fight it, but she was too weak, exactly as Maria had said. Then she wondered if Midori thought of her with the same disdain and tears welled up in her eyes.

Maria yanked her face up again and nearly cackled. "Oh, yes, there it is! Good girl! Good!" She launched into some kind of twirling dance that involved fist pumps and an awful lot of flailing. Oliva gaped at her.

"Um- what? I don't understand," she said quietly, pulling the bottom of her T-shirt up to wipe at her eyes. Her tears always burned terribly.

Maria spun back and capered up to her, grinning delightedly. "Darling, you did it! You cried! Finally!"

This had to be a sick joke. "But, I, well, I- I cried because you made me," Olivia said at last. The fury was blooming again, but Maria just laughed and ran a hand through her thick auburn hair.

"You cried," she repeated, fixing a canny eye on her pupil. "Hold onto that feeling. Use it, replicate it, just as you did when you threatened me."

"It wasn't a threat," Olivia protested dumbly, rubbing her chin.

"Oh yes it was, and it was very good." Maria cocked her head consideringly. "You've gotten to be a rather good actor without my even noticing, which is an accomplishment in itself, because I don't miss much."

"Okay," Olivia sighed, wondering murkily what exactly was wrong with the older woman. "Sure. Are we done here? I'm late for some things."

Maria's eyes drifted to the tiny scabs dotting the soft white skin of Olivia's inner elbow, but she didn't comment. Instead she trailed away into the lifeless depths of the building, a fluttering flamboyant ghost of dark gauze and swaying hips, and called back with a jangling flap of her hand, "Keep the tears! Lock them up! Don't forget! Hold them cherished in the depths of your black little heart!" The door slid shut behind her with a metallic thunk like a coffin lid slamming shut.

"Right," Olivia said to nobody, grinding the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. "Right." She shook her head hard, hoping to rattle her brains back into place, and then squinted in confusion. The bottom of her shirt had a hole in it; she must have ripped it at some point. She'd liked this shirt! It was obvious that today was not going to be a good day, not at all, and Maria's mean trick and nonsense talk about that damn DWMA had made her feel anxiously unsettled. She wished achingly for Midori to say something funny and dark in her ear as she left the room.

* * *

Just then, Midori was rather occupied, and very far away. He wrapped his hands around a branch and pulled his body up with a grunt, lifting his legs over the blow aimed at them, and then kicked out.

He connected nicely, and White Star reeled back, dropping his staff to clutch at his reddened cheek. "What the hell?" he yowled.

Midori shook his head sadly, dropping from the tree and dusting off his hands before giving his neck a good crack. "Come on. Again."

White Star looked entirely displeased with the order, and in fact for a second Midori wondered happily if the grumpy little shit was just going to take off, but his hopes were dashed when the boy glanced to the side and stiffened. His doppelganger was there, taller and older, a bit more scarred and with a lot more wrinkles and unpleasantness on his face, but the two green pairs of eyes that met were just the same, held identical sparking electric passion. "Okay," White Star said abruptly, brushing a pine needle from his shoulder and settling into his opening stance, jaw set so hard it looked painful. "Ready."

"Ah, thanks for the warning," Midori said sarcastically, taking time to crack his knuckles before diving in. The kid did a lot better. It was amazing how motivating a pissy older brother could be, Midori thought wryly, kicking White Star's staff away and jabbing him in the floating ribs. The boy took it stoically, and judging by the uppercut he landed to Midori's jaw a second later, he'd taken that rage and multiplied it exponentially.

Midori shook his ringing head and, suddenly uncomfortably very aware of how old he was getting, decided to finish it. He swiped out a long leg, taking advantage of his much longer reach, and White Star toppled over with a startled yelp. He tried to turn his fall into a retreat, but Midori dived on top of him and wrestled him into an armbar.

White Star struggled, tried to snap his head back to smash Midori's nose, but it was useless and finally he tapped out. They sat back, both panting a little, and Midori was pleased to see that instead of his usual sulky dour expression, his student looked thoughtful. His brother had disappeared, but his short appearance had done as the man had intended.

"Good job goin' for my blind side," Midori told White Star.

He made a face. "It didn't work."

God, but the kid was hard on himself. He was going to positively fly apart into bits one of these days if he didn't learn to relax, and it was all Grey Star's fault; the man pushed and pushed and pushed his brother, and the breaking point hadn't been found yet, but one day it would and either the brothers would kill each other or White Star would run. Midori cracked his neck again, yawning. "It woulda worked against most people. Most people aren't-"

"Fucking seven feet tall?" White Star said with a saucy grin.

"Shut it, you bastard," Midori said, hiding a smile. "But yeah, exactly. You're getting quicker. It's good." He pushed himself up, unfolding his length with a whoosh of breath. "Get on now. I've got a plane to catch in a couple hours."

White Star frowned and flopped down onto the grass, picking up another pine needle and staring at it narrowly. "More Cascadia work?"

That tone meant trouble, and suddenly Midori wished Grey Star would come back and deal with his damnably curious younger brother. "Yep," he grunted, turning to walk away.

"Why are you volunteering for all their jobs?" White Star called after him.

Midori looked back to find the boy staring at him, brow furrowed ferociously. He shrugged, adjusting the headband covering his eye socket. "Damn good pay."

"You have money," White Star persisted, jumping to his feet to tag along at Midori's heels.

"Christ. Mind your own business," Midori growled.

The kid was dismayingly unswayed "Come on. I thought they were just routine stuff? A few security hacks, a little surveying, that kind of thing? Why are you always flying over there to do it? Is it something fun?" Then he grinned widely and waggled his pale brows atrociously. "Is there a super sexy secret agent?"

Midori couldn't stifle a snort at that. White Star's lecherous teenage eyes would probably pop right out of his filthy head if he ever saw the girl's dark loveliness, but Midori was far too old to be interested in her that way. No, she'd touched him with her pale sobbing steel, the quivering desperate strength she so obviously couldn't see, and maybe she reminded him a little of Shannon, too, but that was neither here nor there. "You could say that," he finally settled on. "Now get the hell out of my hair."

White Star rolled his eyes, rubbed his already bruising cheek again with surprising good humor, and skipped off. Midori watched his back as he left, took in the recent widening of his shoulders, the lean whiplash strength of him, so young, and wondered, not for the first time, if the kid would end up like Grey Star. Fuck, but he truly hoped not. One monster was enough for the world. Some kind of blue bird divebombed White Star as he trotted away, cawing raucously, a piece of vibrant sky louder than a foghorn in its tiny anger, and Midori chuckled dryly as he saw the boy instantly choose to run rather than fight.

He slid open the door to his room and- "Speak of the devil," he muttered to himself, displeased. There was the man in question, sitting calmly on his tatami mat.

"Midori," he said in brusque greeting.

"Nice to see you too," Midori said, ill-humor at the intrusion creeping into his tone despite his efforts.

Grey Star didn't seem to care. He just linked his arms behind his neck and fixed the older man with a sharp emerald gaze. "I'm not very happy with White Star's progress. He's slow, he's lazy, and Jaune informed me that you let him skip practice two days ago."

Damn it all, wasn't there anything this bastard missed? A growing boy needed time to himself, instead of being shoved from sparring to running to shooting every hour of the damn day. Doing that to a kid wasn't good. It made them into- well, Olivia, actually. Midori thought for a moment, cocking a hip out and folding his arms over his chest. Finally, deciding regretfully that White Star would just have to pay the price after all for his truancy, he said, "I did. He was working, though. Jaune should also have told you that he was practicing his geography and his boxing." That was barely even a lie. In truth, White Star had snuck out to an Irish pub settled incongruously several blocks down in the middle of Atami's neon chaotic downtown, gotten into a fistfight with a few local boys, and come home with his chest puffed up like a rooster, bloody but unbowed. To be absolutely honest, it had been funny as hell, especially since White Star had somehow ended up with someone's tooth embedded in his boot.

Grey Star's lids fell to halfmast. "Hmmm," he said, drawing it out the point of ridiculousness. "I don't expect such... independent lessons to happen again."

"Sure thing, boss," Midori bit off. Suddenly everything was clammy and claustrophobic, the clan compound, the rustling trees outside, even the birdsong. He stepped away from the door and told Grey Star with his eye that it would be a damn good idea if the the man left.

Grey Star did, calmly, with his trademark lazy grace. "Have fun with your wobble-legged fawn," he said gently, malevolently, before sliding the door closed.

Midori only just managed to restrain himself from throwing something.

* * *

"Well?"

"I'm on my way to the pickup point. I'll be past you in about five minutes. No sign of anyone following," she told him. Midori heard the pride in her voice loud and clear as her words came through the fancy Cascadia transmitter tucked into his ear.

"Good goin'," he said.

Beside him, crouched far up a tree in these damnable woods, White Star shifted and then looked at him with such a confused, disbelieving expression that it was almost funny. He smacked a bug off his arm and then said in a whisper, holding the mute button on his transmitter, "So, why does the super hot secret agent sound like a little kid and why are you being so nice to her?"

Midori slit his eyes at the boy. "You keep your dirty teenage thoughts away from her when you see her. She works better if she's in a good mood, is all."

"Oh," White Star muttered, lifting his brows skeptically. "I think you're going soft in your old age."

"Old? That broken neck I almost gave you yesterday during our spar begs to differ. You don't shut up, I'll break your jaw next time and do everyone a favor," Midori threatened idly.

White Star rolled his eyes and settled back against the trunk, crossing his legs out in front of him along the branch, entirely at ease with their elevation. Midori was slightly less comfortable where he perched on his own branch, mostly from a combination of being folded up too tightly among the thickly packed brances and the devoted harassment of a swarm of mosquitos. White Star snickered as the older man clapped a hand over another of the bloodsucking bastards.

"What's so funny?" Midori asked grumpily, keeping his gaze fixed down through the branches onto the neatly maintained dirt road winding far below them. He, at least, was mature enough to do his job and keep an eye out for Blacktail and any possible pursuers who might want to steal back what she'd just stolen, even if White Star was currently picking his nails with a shuriken and cackling obnoxiously.

"They're gonna pick you up and fly off with you. These mosquitos are something else," the kid mocked.

A drop of freezing water fell from a higher branch and slipped down Midori's face, and he hunched further down inside his hood and scowled at the reminder of just how cold he was in this godforsaken snowy, slushy, Alaskan wasteland. He'd been valiantly attempting to forget. All the old breaks in his battered bones started to reassert themselves painfully when the weather got damp and chill, and his empty eye socket started complaining just as loudly. "Yeah, yeah. They're coming from that damn lake over there. Stagnant water."

"Mmm," White Star hummed, obviously not listening.

Then he blinked and raised his head like a startled deer, with that eerie, almost precognitive sixth sense he sometimes showed, a split second before Olivia's frantic voice came crackling into their ears.

"Midori, uh, something really funny is happening, I don't know-"

A loaded silence settled over them both as her words choked off; they stared at each other for a long moment, taken aback. Everything had gone smooth as silk on this mission. She'd gotten into the logging camp, stayed nicely undercover as a lost and mildly idiotic college student out hiking for three days, gotten the cooked books they'd been hired to snag from right under the foreman's nose, and made her way out an hour ago with impressive ease and only two heads knocked together. White Star frowned, pulled a black plastic device with a long antenna from his hip pouch and squinted at the blinking screen. "She was almost here," he said blankly. The past tense made Midori's jaw clench painfully. "She's just over half a mile-" he pointed- "In that direction. Why was she over there?"

"Fucking hell," Midori spat at nobody before flipping off his branch and sliding down the rope hooked to it so fast it sizzled between his gloved palms. White Star was right behind him, bouncing acrobatically from limb to limb. They hit the ground hard, both of them, but didn't waste time talking. Midori yanked the grappling hook holding his rope to a branch free and coiled it up as they ran, breath puffing out palely before them in the freezing air.

"She's at the lake," White Star said suddenly, veering off a few degrees to the right, still eyeballing his tracking device, currently synchronized with a fake button on Olivia's jacket. It was fancy, expensive, and courtesy of Cascadia; White Star had had a field day when they'd gotten their gear for this mission, falling all over himself in geeky joy. Never in a hundred years would Grey Star have spent Clan funds on technology like that, not unless it was absolutely necessary, and it hadn't been considered so for this mission. It had just been one of the nice toys that Olivia's support teams always received, an extra, but now it seemed like it was a good thing they'd been issued it.

Midori followed, and then, as they popped out of the main mass of the forest and onto the smooth round rocks forming the lake's shore, he skidded to a clattering stop. "White Star," he said faintly, unable to quite voice the reprimand over the primal terror gripping his throat. It worked nonetheless. White Star halted, finally looked up from the screen of the tracker, and then he was shoulder to shoulder with Midori, gun drawn and gleaming in the clear sunshine.

"What the holy hell?" the kid said. His swallow was audible.

"No idea," Midori said. "Don't shoot. Stay back."

"No shit," White Star said faintly. He holstered his gun, but his hand stayed on the butt of it.

Midori said he had no idea, but he knew. He knew exactly what it was propelling Blacktail in a slow spiral fifteen feet above the gently rippling water of the lake. He knew what it was bathing her whole body in a shining rainbow, and he knew the power of the thing pulling and ripping every muscle in her body agonizingly taut, contorting her into a wrenching arch until her heels nearly touched the back of her head. He knew, and the bitter knowledge made him pull the sniper rifle strapped to his back from its holster.

White Star turned to him at that, looking pale and young, but still with enough of Grey Star in him to say, "You can't shoot her. If those documents get ruined- they're the only copies, we won't get paid."

Midori watched Olivia spasm painfully and grimaced as her mouth opened in a soundless scream. "Some things are more important than getting the job done," he said roughly, ignoring the kid's shocked face, before peering through the scope of the gun, flinching a little as the ice-cold metal burned the skin around his eye.

It magnified the girl to a terrifying degree and he saw that the flickering multicolored lights were shining out of her skin, as impossible as that seemed, but there it was; she'd gone translucent and lit up from within like a lantern of stained glass. It was oddly beautiful, or it would have been if she hadn't been tied up in a back-breaking knot. She turned more, spinning in the air so that her long hair fell down below her in a dark cloud, and then her eyes met his, blazing and frantic even over the distance. The pain and terror in them was nauseating.

"Shit! She's awake. I don't believe this," he said, nearly shouting in frustration.

"What is going on?" White Star snapped, pushing the barrel of the gun down. Midori straightened up and growled at the pushy dominance of the motion.

Then he took another look at the boy and sighed. His eyes were almost as wide and fearful as Olivia's. White Star was as reliable as any grown man, and he worked three times as hard and twice as viciously as most of Star Clan; sometimes Midori almost forgot he was just thirteen, despite his painfully overdone cockiness. Still he hesitated to speak, for a long moment, because what White Star knew, Grey Star knew, and knowledge this powerful could easily result in Olivia's death. Witches lived solitary lives for a reason. Their powers were sought after by criminals and scientists, and their souls were hunted by Lord Death and his minions. There weren't many in the world who wouldn't kill a witch if given the chance, merely on principle.

So Midori put his hand on White Star's shoulder and leaned down. "I've done a lot for you over the years," he said, clearly and slowly. "Do you understand me? I'm going to tell you something, and you cannot tell Grey Star. You cannot. He'll kill that girl or sell her to the highest bidder and she doesn't deserve that."

White Star just gaped at him. "I don't under-" he started.

Midori gripped his shoulder more firmly. "There's no dishonor in keeping this secret."

White Star looked away. "So tell me then."

As if Midori was some kind of idiot. "Not until you swear on the Clan."

The kid jumped and practically started squawking. "What? No, I can't do that! Listen, if my brother needs to know what the hell is going on with floaty chick over there then I'm going to tell him! I can't just not tell him!"

"He doesn't need to know," Midori snarled, losing his patience fast as Olivia writhed and twisted in the corner of his vision. "Swear, or by all the spirits and all the gods I will bring you both down and the Star Clan around you!"

White Star's jaw fell open. "That girl means that much to you?" he said after a moment. The jealousy in his tone was clear.

"Yeah, maybe," Midori admitted sourly, only just now realizing it and halfway hating himself for ever getting attached to the poor thing. Attachments, in his experience, generally ended in heartbreak, especially considering the violent world he lived in, and he tried to avoid them unless they were really worthwhile. But then, he'd already threatened the Star brothers, riding on a wave of nervous trepidation and shock. He was in up to his neck already, so he said again, "Swear it. Do this one thing for me, White Star."

The kid got a nasty, conniving sort of look on his face, for just a split second, but then he crumpled and said hoarsely, "Okay. I swear. I swear it on the Star Clan. But this had better not hurt my brother!"

"I wouldn't be stupid enough to ask you to swear if it would. I know it wouldn't mean a damn thing," Midori said dryly, clapping him on the shoulder in an exuberant rush of relief. The rushing wind and gurgle of the lake against the rocks of the shore were overly loud in his ears. How could the girl be bent so far? Her bones should be snapping. She should be screaming. That light draining out of her should be humming or something. This unnatural quiet had all his instincts shrieking on red alert.

"Well?" White Star said.

Midori shook himself and said harshly, "Girl's a witch."

White Star looked up and to the left for a moment, silvery brows twitching up in blatant disbelief."I'm sorry, I thought you just said that pretzel girl over there is a witch."

"I did." Midori turned back to the lake and laced his hands together behind his neck, glaring at the contorted shape of the girl. "Shit, that has got to hurt."

"Okay, uh, can we go back to the witch part please?" White Star said impatiently. "Witches don't help humans in any way, shape or form. They don't work for Cascadia and they don't reveal themselves unless they either are so powerful it doesn't matter or they're forced to."

Midori realized he was pacing and forced himself to stop and think. "I don't think she knew," he mused. "It's the only thing that makes sense. She's thirteen, that's about the time their powers manifest."

"Eh?"

"Puberty, you little shit, you'll learn all about that eventually. I really don't think she knew." Midori turned and regarded the writhing silhouette shrouded in shimmering colors with vague wonder. This tragic, broken girl, the illicit daughter of the ruthless president of Cascadia Security, a human weapon, alone in the world with her childish hands bloodied to the elbow- and now she had this curse on her head. He heaved a morose sigh at the vagrant cruelties of fate and picked up a rock.

"What are you doing?" White Star yelped as Midori threw the stone. It hit Olivia right in the knee, and she swiveled a little in the air, but nothing else happened.

"We need to snap her out of it. We need those documents and we need to get out of here before some dumbass logger comes looking for her."

"Right. Okay, so, we stone the witch," White Star muttered, yanking on a piece of his white hair distractedly. "I'll just pretend it's, like, the seventeeth century. Fun times."

"Don't be a smart ass." Midori nailed Olivia on the hip. She flinched, her back arched even further, and the colors started to shift faster.

"Shut up, old man." White Star hit her in the face with his stone. He threw a rock with the same accuracy as he threw a dagger; impressive, really, but that was going to leave one heck of a bruise.

"Christ! Don't do that!" Midori snapped.

"Worked, didn't it?" the kid said, pointing. Midori whirled back to the lake, and sure enough, Olivia was sinking slowly, the ephemeral rainbow fading from her skin, and the dizzy movement of her hand as she raised it to her face was no seizure. Midori pulled his grapple rope from his hip and threw it, catching her neatly around the ankle, and drew her into the shore like some morbid balloon as she floated downwards. He just got her to dry ground in time as she touched down. As soon as she hit the rocks of the shore, she gave a sobbing shriek and curled in on herself.

White Star looked entirely horrified by everything, and Midori was satisfied to see him wince as Olivia raised a shaking hand to the purpling mark on her cheek. "Ouch," she whispered, rubbing her eyes. She looked up at them then, lips quivering in an obvious effort to hold back tears, pale and small and scared, drowning in her oversized parka. How she'd ever passed as a college student was beyond Midori, even as well as he'd gotten to know her acting abilities over the past months.

Then he blinked, because brash, mouthy, outrageously irreverent White Star was kneeling beside her, gently putting an arm over her shoulders as she shivered, and wiping at her tears with the end of his scarf. "Hey, you're all right, it's fine," he said, and suddenly he wasn't a child. He was right on the edge of manhood, and Midori's stomach lurched, because there was no time any more, no time to repair the cracked edges and poisonously low self-esteem Grey Star had wrought.

Olivia scooted away from White Star, eyeing him narrowly, as if he were going to either bite her or toss her into the lake, and Midori only just stifled a laugh, brought back from his dark introspection by her apparent confusion. "Who's that?" she said suspiciously to Midori.

"My name's Nova," White Star said loftily.

"What a stupid name." Apparently she'd decided she didn't much like him and his overly friendly ways. Midori only just held back a snicker at the boy's offended face.

"It's my codename!"

"It's still stupid," she retorted coldly.

White Star twitched. "So is yours! Blacktail? Seriously? Like a fucking deer? Ooh, that's so scary, Bambi, oh my god!"

She glowered at him stormily. "Did you throw that last rock at me?"

"Yeah. What of it?"

She stood up at that, albeit a bit shakily, and proceeded to shriek and shake her fist at him until Midori pulled her away. White Star sat down on the rocks and sulked unbecomingly while Midori checked her over, all her unusual spitfire gone in a moment as the adrenaline from her experience wore off. She let him look her over; she just stood there like a doll as he checked her pulse and her pupils. If he hadn't known all too well that she was trying to think of a way out of this mess, he would have been concerned at her lethargy.

"You seem fine," he said after a minute. "We need to get moving, though, if you were tailed they could be catching up."

"I don't think they could track me, I stuck to the trees for a fair bit," she murmured, stretching and wincing. "Um, why am I- what happened?"

He sighed and rubbed his temples. This was not going to be a fun conversation, and if it weren't for the fact that runaway witch powers could get her killed on a mission, he might have just let it alone for the moment, but if she was reacting so strongly to the onset of her heritage, he really had no choice. "What do you think happened?"

She squinted thoughtfully at her hands, which were only trembling a little now. "I heard a voice. From the lake. It just kept saying my name, and I don't know why, but I went over to the water and then something pulled me in. I was drowning and something was talking to me. But then I was on shore and I wasn't drowning and that dumb- who is that Nova boy, anyway? I wasn't briefed on his presence. Why is he here?" All of a sudden she transformed from a child to a warlord, sharp as a razor when it came to her work.

"Breathe, kiddo," Midori admonished. "He's here because he's in training, and because of the rival agent reports we got. I wasn't gonna go in alone to cover you if this place was already crawling with hired guns. Those papers you took are pretty damn popular."

"Oh." She didn't look entirely pleased with that, but she accepted it with her trademark passive stoicism. "If I drowned why aren't my clothes wet?"

"You didn't drown, you were floating and you were spitting all this colorful light stuff. You're taking this awful well," he said. Then it hit him. "This isn't the first weird shit that's happened to you, is it?"

She looked away and plucked fitfully at a button on her coat. The chill, weary emptiness of her eyes tore at his heart. "No, it's not. There have been... things in my mirror."

Something very cold slid down his spine at her matter-of-fact admission, and not for the first time in his life, he cursed witches and their unnatural magic. Some things were just too dark to ever live in the daylight. "Pretty sure you're a witch," he said dolefully, and watched her face go shocked and furious.

"What? You're joking. That's crazy. I can't be a witch!" she protested, as vehemently as if just saying the words could make it true.

"I've seen quite a few of them in my day. You got another explanation for what's been happening to you? Cause I surely don't," he said brutally.

"Maybe I've been poisoned. Um, maybe it's some kind of hallucinogen. My father experiments on me plenty anyway-" and then her whole body went rigid.

"Blacktail? Hey, girlie, snap out of it," Midori said, waving a hand in front of her face, then leaning down to give her a little shake when she didn't move.

She pressed her hands over her mouth and shut her eyes for a second, shoulders drooping, then cracked one eye to stare at him, trembling from head to feet. "He's- he's- all my whole life they've-"

She was going to either stroke out or faint dead away if she didn't calm down. She was so overwrought that she could hardly even speak. Then, of all things, she started ripping her coat off, ignoring the freezing temperature of the air. Suddenly interested again, White Star wolf-whistled in the background, but she put one of the vulgar gestures Midori had taught her a while back to good use and ignored the boy, dropping her parka on a rock and shoving up the sleeves of the blue sweater she had on underneath.

"Look. _Look_ at this. Every day they take my blood," she said without preamble, shoving her forearms in his direction, teeth bared in a way that seemed almost unconscious. Bruises and tiny scabs laced the thin skin inside her elbows.

For the first time in a long time, Midori had no idea what to say. None of his proverbs or wisecracks fit the situation, not even a little, so he just looked at her as she raged quietly inside her own head.

She gritted her teeth and tugged her sleeves down angrily. "He knows. He's known all along," she breathed.

"Sounds like it," Midori said, shooting White Star a repressive glare over her shoulder; the boy had been trying to creep close enough to overhear in a shamefully obvious manner, especially for a ninja. "The question is, what are you gonna do about it? And also we really should get goin'."

"Okay," she said compliantly, sliding her sleeves back into her parka. "Let's go. Can you keep that mean boy away from me?"

The warlord was gone and the child was back in full force. He mustered up half a grin for her even as a buried piece of him wondered how easily she could rend him limb from limb with her witch powers. The depths of his eye socket tingled in remembered pain. The only witch he'd ever fought had impaled his teammate on the fangs of a giant snake and then torn his eye clean out within half a minute, laughing all the while, as cheerful as if she'd been baking a damn cake. He really, really didn't want to ever repeat the experience. "Why do you think he's mean?"

Her lips pulled sideways. "Uh- it's just a feeling."

"Witches usually have good instincts," he told her. It wasn't a lie, and anyway she was right. Midori had seen White Star stomp on the fragile face of a man already down countless times, had seen him hold a gun to the head of a child to force the parent into giving up desired information. He would be blanched and restless afterwards, but he would do it because he knew that if it wasn't done, Grey Star would sweep in and do worse. The boy _was_ mean, as snappish and defensive as a beaten dog. He'd been forced and tortured and punished into embracing, or at least tolerating, that darker side of himself. Beyond that, he'd become good at falling into it, in a way Midori had never quite been able to do.

She looked fixedly at her feet as they tromped through the snow back to the cover of the trees, and she didn't say a word until they made it to the snowmobiles stashed deep under a makeshift roof of branches. She swung a leg over hers and turned the key, but Midori's hand on her shoulder made her pause, though she still didn't look at him.

"Good job today, Blacktail," he said. The tight, babyish tremble of her chin told him that she understood he wasn't commending her for just the theft of valuable documents.

"Thanks, Midori, I'll see you next time," she muttered before tugging the collar of her parka up over her mouth and driving off, sending a spray of snow over White Star in what was clearly no accident.

"What is her deal?" the kid sputtered, wiping his face and glowering after her as she disappeared over a snowdrift. "God, what a bitch."

Midori snagged him by the collar and hauled him up into the air in a heartbeat, holding him choking and struggling in front of his good eye. "You spoiled little fuck! Do you even have a soul anymore? That girl just found out she's got the devil in her bloodstream, she's got nobody to tell her how to deal with it without burning herself up, and if she tells anybody she'll be killed! You freaked her out! She isn't used to people, and anyway why the hell should she trust a stranger like you seeing her go through what just happened, eh?" White Star finally came to his senses, let out a gurgle, and swung a fist towards Midori's head, but the older man dropped him roughly before the blow could land.

To his credit, White Star stayed on his ass where he'd landed, rubbed his throat, and appeared to actually be thinking about Midori's words. "She reminds you of your daughter," he said after a moment, viciously, going straight for the throat, and Midori barely managed to keep from kicking him square in the skull. He didn't bother asking how White Star knew that particular fact about his history. It wasn't anything Midori talked about, but his real name was on the birth certificate, still on file in a little Scottish hospital, and maybe that wasn't much of a paper trail, but it still existed. Among Grey Star's many talents was a nasty skill for ferreting out information, and what one brother knew, they both knew.

"Fuck you," Midori managed through gritted teeth. Something like fear passed over White Star's face as he cringed on the ground and Midori was abruptly aware that he was looming over the boy, a hand on the hilt of his dagger, practically radiating killing intent. He forced himself to subside and blew a breath out slowly through his nose. "Who did she remind you of?" he hissed. "You were awful sweet to her for a moment there, boy."

White Star showed his teeth a little, the futile display of a cornered puppy. They stared at each other, both breathing hard, until finally White Star looked away and wilted back. "I'm sorry," he said.

"You best not say that to me unless you mean it."

"I do, okay? I'm sorry. She's weird but I guess I get it. I didn't think of it like that."

"All right. I'm sorry too." Midori straddled his own snowmobile, overlong limbs bending uncomfortably, and closed his eyes for a moment, wishing away the last of his desire to smack the rebellious bully from the boy's face. "Come on, mount up. Let's get going."

White Star did as instructed, but he hesitated for a second, eyes narrowed in thought. "She doesn't seem like a witch," he said at last. "She seems like a good agent. She wasn't even that freaked out. Like, she was brave. So maybe she really is like Shannon." Midori flinched at the name and turned on the engine to his snowmobile so he wouldn't have to answer.


	3. Chapter 3

Olivia watched her reflection warily, but it just stood there, obeying her every move faithfully and accurately. She still didn't trust it. It looked at her with very black eyes, ran pale fingers through wavy black hair, and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. She leaned closer, stuck her tongue out, peeled her lips back to examine the uniformity of her teeth. She twisted around to peer at the naked curve of her spine and watch the aching slide of muscles over her shoulder blades. Her toes wriggled neatly, all in a line, and her calves were as rounded and strong as ever.

"Hello?" she whispered, and watched the lips of her reflection mimic her perfectly. The voice from the lake didn't answer, so she put on her pajamas and slid into bed, feeling futile and stupid and more than a bit crazy. She left the light on in her room, figuring that if something horrible happened, she might as well be able to see it.

She'd only been lying there for a few minutes when a firm rapping sounded at her door. When she opened it, her father's blonde assistant was standing there, looking as shiny and perfect as ever, even now at nine o'clock at night.

"Mr. Deering wishes to see you," she said crisply.

"Uh, okay. Let me change really quick," Olivia said blearily. "Five minutes." The blonde nodded and was in the exact same position when Olivia reopened the door, fully dressed. They rode the elevator upwards in mutually antagonistic silence punctuated by the odd, needling glare.

When Olivia walked into his office, her father was much less pulled together than his assistant. His tie had been abandoned and his hair was mussed; it was one of only a few times she could ever recall seeing him less than absolutely in control, and it shook her up. "What's wrong?" she said before she could stop herself.

He settled back and tapped a finger against the armrest of his chair. She watched and thought about how much her reflection resembled him. What had she gotten from her witch mother, besides tainted blood? Not for the first time, she wondered what her mother was like, but now her musings were more serious, more driven. "In seven months you're going to be enrolled in the Death Weapon Meister Academy," her father said without preamble.

She nearly jumped out of her skin. "What?"

"You'll be fourteen. That's the age when new students generally enroll. You know that."

"I- um- yes, but- is it a, uh, a mission?"

He snorted. "Of course it's a mission. We only just today got you a foolproof cover identity. They're very thorough about background checks there. You'll be posing as Jennifer Mason." He slid a manila folder across the wide glossy expanse of his desk. She opened it with numb fingers, marveling at the thick stack of papers inside it. "Start studying," he commanded when she looked up at him. She just nodded and stood there, trying very hard not to fidget.

Then something occurred to her. "It's only for meisters and weapons," she said in confusion.

"You're a meister. You've got the genetic markers for it."

"I am? You know the genes responsible for-"

"Yes. It's a rare double recessive on the thirteenth chromosome. It's in the papers." He pointed, obviously getting irritated with her stupidity, as if she should somehow magically have known this crazy fact about herself. She slumped, pressing the top of her thumbnail up into her teeth nervously. Double recessive- she'd had to have gotten a copy from both her parents, then, since that term meant it took two copies of the gene working in tandem for any effect to occur. One gene alone would be overpowered by more dominant ones. That meant her mother had been at least a carrier, bearing a single, inactive copy of the gene to pass on. Olivia hadn't known witches to have any meister lineage whatsoever, but the proof was in the pudding. Then an image leapt into her head, half-remembered from many misty years ago- her father bearing a shining blade that spoke with a faraway, ringing voice. She closed her eyes for a second and thought about the chilly blonde secretary, all edges and angles with a sharp silver tongue, who never bothered to carry a weapon even in the the presence of the most dangerous potential clients and yet walked as if she had never known fear.

Olivia had discovered so many things today, and she was beyond overwhelmed, but she was also thirsty for more. She decided that she liked actually understanding things. "Why am I doing this?" she dared.

Her father's gaze snapped up to hers. She thought about the lies and the needles and the endless hours spent on cold laboratory tables and was able to straighten her back, even under the weight of his calculating expression. "Because I'm telling you to, mostly, but also because the Academy is the worldwide authority on human weapons and I want to know everything they know."

"There's a lot of money to be made from knowing things like that, isn't there? Human genetic experimentation," she spat, the paperwork crinkling under her fists as she clenched them.

He actually looked taken aback for a moment. Then he laughed at her, and all her righteous rage drained away in an instant. "Yes, Olivia, quite a lot of money, so you had better study hard," he chuckled, flapping a hand in clear dismissal.

She slumped away, unable to even muster up a parting glower for the assistant, despair filling the void where her weak, momentary courage had been. Never in a hundred years would her father fear her, and never in a thousand could she raise her hand to him. Those were simple facts, as undeniable as the rising and setting of the sun. Something far inside her turned sour and rotten.

She returned to her bed and spread out the paperwork. By the time the surface of her quilt was entirely filled, she'd only gotten an eighth of the way through all of it. First she scanned the documents about the DWMA's admissions policy; it was pretty standard stuff, surprisingly normal for a school in which kids trained to kill monsters with other kids. Really, she already knew most of it. There was a humongous dossier on her cover identity, complete with social security number, forged birth certificate, and a false family history, right down to a labrador named Happy. She stared for a while at the picture of Jennifer Mason's mother and father. They were sweet, smiling, a little fat and a little awkward. They were the most civilian, unremarkable people she could have possibly imagined. Her own father would have looked like a creature from another world next to them. Would she be plump and cheerful too, laughing and ordinary, juggling algebra and middle-school and crushes, if they'd really been her parents? No matter how she tried, she couldn't reconcile the thought with the girl who'd watched her from her mirror.

She stood up and flipped the pages on her calendar, valiantly ignoring the little flicker her reflection gave as she passed the mirror, shimmering like water glancing off waves. She circled August 19th, seven months and twelve days in the future, the day she'd be walking into the lion's den. Her stomach did nervous flips as she stared at the numbers of the date, and she resolved to pay much better attention to Maria's lessons.

She returned to her bed and watched the moonlight creep across her ceiling, trying to coax the lights Midori had spoken of from her skin. Nothing happened, but somehow the sick unease inside her dimmed a little at the edges. She, Olivia, was a _witch_, with powers like she'd never dreamed of lurking inside her. Her father knew this fact, but he didn't know that she knew, and as long as she could keep that secret, she had an advantage over him, for the very first time in her whole life. That thought put a whisper of a smile on her lips as her exhausted body slipped into slumber.

* * *

White Star waited in the alley, collar drawn up against the whistling wind, and eventually a skinny, balding man came sidling up, glancing in every direction at once and practically quivering right out of his skin.

"Chill out," White Star told him reprovingly. The guy jumped and blinked at him owlishly.

"Hi! Hello there! Sorry. Uh, you're Nova? You're the guy?"

"Yeah." White Star glanced around to reaffirm their solitude before pulling the corner of an envelope out of his jacket pocket, just enough for the bald man to see. "I've got the money if you're still down to talk."

"Yes. Yes I am. This is entirely confidential? You're sure?"

God, this man was twitchy. No respectable person should be so hyper this early in the morning. "I'm sure," White Star said, forcing a note of reassuring confidence into his voice to smother the irritation. "I need information on an agent who goes by Blacktail. She's around thirteen, pale, dark hair, at least partly Asian descent. She works exclusively for Cascadia, specializes in undercover work and assassinations."

"I know her," the skinny guy said immediately. "I know her! That's Olivia. I mapped her genome."

Well, that was unexpected. White Star tried furiously to gather up the bits and pieces of his scattered science lessons. "Her- you're talking about her genetics? You guys can do that there?"

The bald man's face lit up. "Of course, of course! Cascadia has laboratories bigger than NASA, they're right on the edge of everything, got a finger in all the pies you can imagine! Where do you think that yellow fever outbreak in Egypt back in '87 came from, huh? That was us! My team worked on that!" Pride was in every syllable he spoke.

White Star fisted his hands inside his pockets to keep from snapping the man's scrawny neck. There was no honor in killing from a thousand miles away, using a virus as proxy, pressing a button and ending lives with slow fevered cruelty. At least when White Star killed, he tried his best to do it quickly, and at least his victims almost always had a chance to fight back. "Wow," he said, pasting on a smile and nudging the guy back to reality. "That's cool, dude, really. So you know Blacktail?"

"Olivia, yes, I do. She's quite special. She's both a meister and a half-breed witch. She hadn't shown any evidence of powers when I worked at Cascadia, but that was three years ago. We really don't know if she'll ever develop any. No one's done any research on witch genetics, really, they're so hard to get ahold of, next to impossible. God, it was exciting, the things her blood could do! Do you know that girl is completely immune to toxins? We put strychnine in her blood, arsenic, cyanide, pure hydrofluoric acid, and her white blood cells ate them all up! She's a miracle."

"Okay, well, that's interesting," White Star interrupted. The man was nearly swooning away. "Anything else? Do you know her history?"

"Hmm, well, uh, she's a bit of a mystery. I've got no idea how Cascadia got their hands on a specimen of her caliber. She just showed up in the labs as a toddler one day and the higher-ups gave us free rein. They wanted to isolate the components of her witch heritage for possible weaponization."

Now, that was more like it. White Star leaned forward a little. "Did it work?"

The man frowned sulkily, strands of his sparse combover blowing around in the wind. "No," he admitted, sounded personally victimized. "We discovered quite a bit about Olivia, but not very much about witches in general, if you understand. They're all different, it seems, and their powers affect their biology in different ways, but of course there's got to be a root for it in their DNA, and it's got to be carried on the X chromosome, of course, because there's never been a male witch, but that's really a very basic hypothesis, it's not thoroughly tested at all, and that's a huge oversimplification, you know, layman's terms and all that, and-"

White Star exhaled slowly. "That's super cool but I don't honestly really care about that bit. Is that all you know about her?"

The man goggled at White Star like he couldn't possibly conceive of someone not wanting to yap about genes and chromosomes and nerdy shit. "Well- yes, that's it, but that's more than anyone's ever found out about witches, you know, it's very difficult to get a specimen, they're so strong, and of course there's the accelerated decomposition upon death, and-"

"Okay," White Star sighed, cutting the man off yet again. "Awesome. Thanks, then. Here." He handed the guy the envelope of money and stalked off. He thought about the girl and the way the strange iridescence had played over her skin. He'd never met a witch before, but Midori had been uncharacteristically volatile after the entire debacle in Alaska, for several days, and every so often one hand would creep up to adjust the bandanna tied over his eye, far more often than was usual for him. If White Star had been a gambler, he would have taken his teacher's ill-tempered twitchiness as a sign that Midori, at least, was far more familiar with the ways of witches. How could a person go thirteen years and never know, though? He suddenly wished he knew more on the subject of witches and their powers. Everybody knew that they thrived on violence, breathed it in for sustenance like humans took in oxygen, but Blacktail had been mostly quiet. True, she'd shouted at him for no real reason, but she hadn't carried the expression of a killer in her eyes, and when making her escape from the logging camp, she'd chosen to knock out the two men who'd accosted her, rather than killing them to be absolutely certain she wouldn't be followed or recognized. He kept trying but he couldn't quite connect the dots between her deadly, natural predator grace and her teary, scared reliance on Midori, of all people.

It was a long and chilly walk back to the Star Clan compound, and when he got there, he had to fend off Jaune's ferocious attempts to bully him into making her breakfast, but eventually he escaped via a shortcut involving some rooftop acrobatics and a daring dive into a bush. Seven was sitting in front of a glowing array of monitors, sipping steadily on a steaming mug of coffee and apparently unfazed by the ungodly ruckus of the birds outside his one window, when White Star sidled into his work room

"Hey," White Star said. The older man didn't reply, eyes fixedly tracking a stream of bright blue numbers filling up his computer screen. "Hey," White Star tried again, and when he still got no reply, he slammed a hand down beside a keyboard and barked, "Scarlet Star! Wake up, dude!"

Seven didn't move a muscle, other than his eyes, which slid over to White Star with almost palpable malevolence. He really hated being addressed by anything other than his code name. "What? It's early. I'm doing stuff. What do you want?"

"I need you to look up someone for me, but you're gonna have to keep it kind of on the down low."

Seven squinted at him cannily, reaching out to type something, without even looking, at a blisteringly fast speed. "Doing some extracurricular work?"

"I guess." White Star mentally crossed his fingers, hoping Seven would take the bait. "It's Cascadia Security. I need info on one of their operatives."

Seven's blonde brows shot up. What with his truly incredible bedhead and the loose, threadbare sweats he was wearing, the expression made him look a little feral and a little crazed. "Cascadia? Oh, wow. Isn't that the corporation Midori's been running off to every few weeks lately?"

"Yeah. They have, like, the highest of all the high tech, though. If it's gonna be a pain for you to hack in I can just-"

"Shut your blasphemous mouth!" Seven hunched over his central computer and started stroking the chunky grey plastic. "Don't listen to him, baby, we can totally do this."

White Star laughed in spite of himself. "Have you named this one yet? That's the new one, right?"

Seven grinned toothily and petted the keyboard. "Yeah. Esmeralda."

White Star wondered idly why only the absolute weirdest dregs of society ever signed up for the Star Clan. "Uh- that's- huh. Pretty, I guess?"

"Damn right it is." Seven gave Esmeralda one final caress before standing up and stretching, pulling one overly muscled arm across his chest until his star tattoo bulged, then the other. "I'm going to go for a run. Hit me up later and I'll work on your thing for you after I get your brother's stuff done, okay?"

White Star nodded. "Thanks, I appreciate it."

"No problem." Seven hopped nimbly out the window and White Star heard him flinging good-natured, if virulent, curses at all the birds as he grew further and further away, heading for the pathway that wound up the nearby mountain.

Actually, a workout sounded good. Well, not enjoyable, precisely, but Grey Star had no doubt already been in the gym for an hour or so, and White Star was feeling vague, itchy guilt about that fact, so he headed outside to find Midori.

* * *

"Stick your tongue out, please." Olivia eyed the newest scientist working in the Cascadia labs askance, but she did as asked, and Medea shone a light down her throat before settling a thermometer under her tongue.

"Wassamatta?" Olivia mumbled around the cold glass, teeth clinking on it.

"Careful, that's got to stay under your tongue. I'm fairly certain you just have the flu, honestly."

Olivia grimaced and slumped forward, drumming her heels against the metal struts of the examination table. "Ugghh," she moaned wordlessly. This was unfair, and she felt positively awful. A small part of her wanted very much to curl up in bed under a mountain of blankets and hide from th world.

Medea turned and gave her a sympathetic little half-smile, fumbling for a pen in one of the pockets of her lab coat. "I know. The flu's awful. Hopefully it'll be one of those quick twenty-four hour ones. I'll give you some really good medicine to help with the stuffy head and the sore throat, okay?"

Olivia nodded dolefully. "Mmkay," she hummed, shifting the thermometer around in her mouth a bit.

Medea wrote something down on her clipboard, then glanced back up at the clock and said briskly, "All right! Time's up. Let's see." She held out a hand for the thermometer, apparently not minding Olivia's saliva at all, and brought it up to the light to read the mercury better. "A hundred and two. You definitely have the flu."

"Ugh," Olivia said again, wincing as her throat gave a mighty throb.

Medea clicked her tongue comfortingly and patted Olivia on the head as she rummaged around in a drawer. "Here. There's instructions on the label. At the very least, they'll help you get some sleep."

"Thank you," Olivia said dully. Her father was going to throw an unparalelled fit when he found out she was sick and therefore unable to work. With all the vitamins and balanced meals they stuffed her full of, it was a wonder she ever got sick, but germs weren't picky. Then again, the worst she'd had before was a cold; she'd been lucky enough to escape the usual childhood trials of chickenpox and strep and the like. It was probably because she was vaccinated up to her eyeballs every few months, what with all the traveling to foreign countries she did. "Uh, how long am I going to be like this?" she asked tentatively, sniffling.

Medea tilted her head consideringly, dimpling her cheek with one black-painted fingernail. "I'd guess anywhere from two days to maybe five. It just depends, really, there's no way to tell."

"Oh," Olivia said drearily. She shut her eyes, feeling her pulse pound painfully in her clogged nose. Every muscle in her body was hurting; she felt about a thousand years old. Even her eyeballs were throbbing.

Medea watched her carefully for a moment, then tucked the bottles of medicine into a paper bag before handing them over. Then she leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms. "You're used to being on the move a lot, aren't you? Always being busy?" Olivia nodded, pinching the bridge of her nose sharply in an effort to relieve some of her misery. "You're going to have to stay in bed. Trust me. Just sleep as much as you possibly can. Your body needs rest."

"Easier said than done," Olivia muttered, grimacing as a sudden and vicious craving for ice cream hit her. If she was stuck in bed, she would have to study up for her impending job at the Death Weapon Meister Academy, and there wasn't a thing she could think of that was less relaxing. She would quite literally rather assassinate a head of government than think about how she was going to be trying to fool an actual god, of all things. Just imagining it made her insides knot up.

Medea nodded. "I understand. Listen, I have a bunch of old movies and books and things that I haven't unpacked yet, you know, I just moved here a few weeks ago. I can bring them up to your room later if you'd like some entertainment." Olivia made to protest, but Medea lifted a long finger reprovingly. "If it's doctor's orders not to work, the suits upstairs can't really complain, can they?"

"I guess," Olivia said, smiling back shyly. For a moment, she thought about Janie, with a sharp twinge of longing.

Medea had the sort of face that was neither young nor old, and very perfect, like a doll, wide across the cheekbones with a rather sharp nose. Her eyes were very bright and very gold, and really, Olivia probably would have been secretly intimidated by such a sophisticated woman, but then Medea gave a mischievous sideways grin and suddenly seemed much younger and nicer.

She twirled the longer locks of her blonde bob that fell forward to frame her face and winked. "I'll see you later, then. Take a nap!"

Olivia did just that, and it took her a second to pull her feverish sweaty self out of bed and slither over to the door when a knock woke her up that evening. There was nobody in the hallway when she looked out, but a cardboard box was sitting outside her door, chock full of books and movies, with a candy bar perched on top.

She took the box inside her room and investigated while falling on the candy bar like a starved wolf. Shuffling through the box's contents revealed nothing that sounded better to her than sleep, but still, it was very nice of Medea to have brought up something to distract Olivia from her misery, and it made her feel a fuzzy inner warmth that wasn't just fever. She was just about to flop back into bed when a book tucked in the bottom of the box caught her eye. It was deep blue, and when she pulled it out, there was no writing whatsoever on the cover or the spine to reveal its contents. When she opened it, she sat down numbly on her bed, head whirling.

This was a book about witches. This was a book _for_ witches. She flipped through page after page, devouring the words, half-eaten candy bar forgotten on her bedside table. The first chapter talked about various kinds of elemental magic, the second spoke about summoning familiars, and the third took her down to hell and gave her a detailed tour that made her breath catch in disbelieving horror. The fourth chapter went through the secret heirarchy of witch society, and the fifth was crammed with illustrations of famous witches throughout history. Most of them had poetically terrifying titles like 'Joan of the Infinite Veins' or 'Blood-haired Koammi', and their backstories were all equally gruesome. It seemed that murdering a large number of humans was a rather quick route to fame in the witch world.

Olivia felt both numb and elated, even as she wondered why in the hell Medea the biologist had such a volume. It appeared to be hand-written, in rich inks colored crimson and emerald and impossibly deep black, and there were no publisher's credits mentioned, nor an author. Olivia would lay money on this being an original and possibly an only copy, and also likely very old; the vaguely brittle texture to the pages and their faint, musty scent spoke of antiquity. She turned another page, stared at a handsomely inked picture of a fox witch luring several men into a pit full of spikes, and realized her hands were trembling violently.

Either Medea had already been informed of Olivia's heritage upon taking the job for Cascadia's labs, was researching very seriously, and this book making its way here was just a coincidence, or there was something darker going on. Olivia slammed the book closed and practically threw it from her, then hunched over the edge of the bed and hung her head between her knees, concentrating on calming herself down so she could think.

Her father didn't believe in such things as coincidences. He would tell her that something this big was no accident, that someone was behind it, and she should think very hard about who would want her to learn more about her witch blood. To do that, she had to narrow down the list of people who actually _knew_ she was part witch. At first that seemed simple enough; her father, her mysterious mother, Midori, Nova- but then the list got tangled. She had no idea how many of the people down in Cascadia's labs actually knew what she was and why she was being studied. Cascadia had a stunningly high turnover rate and a huge number of employees just here in the New York headquarters, and even though she'd personally killed a few traitorous ex-employees herself, she knew for a fact that there were some in the world still roaming around alive.

She leaned across her quilt and snagged the book again, opening it to the page with the fox witch. For an instant, she wondered, with mixed apprehension and hope, if perhaps Medea was her mother, come to sneakily pass on witchy wisdom, but she dismissed the notion as fast as it had come. Not only was there absolutely no physical resemblance between them, there was no way her mother could ever have gotten a job under her father- he personally screened all potential employees. At the very least, he made sure to look through a roster of security photos once a week or so. He had double-crossed too many people to leave him anything but right on the edge of obsessively paranoid.

Olivia stared at the sly, murderous glint in the fox witch's eyes and then had to dash to her bathroom to puke.

Coming back out, breathing raggedly and still nauseous, she eyed the book. It was sitting with perfet innocence on her bed, looking as normal as anything. She touched a finger to it gingerly, half-afraid it might burn her somehow, then slid it under her pillow, slipped on a pair of shoes, and headed out her door. The walk down the hallway to the elevator had her swaying and cursing her weakness, but she made it, and she pressed the complex sequence of floor numbers required to send the elevator down to the secret underground levels of the laboratories with the ease of long habit, even if she felt like she might throw up again.

When she got to the labs, they were as brightly lit and unwelcoming as ever. She wandered around until she found a guy in the Bio wing, passed out with his face smashed against the open pages of a notebook, a gnawed pencil still held in one limp hand. It wasn't surprising. There were always at least a few people working on things overnight in one wing or another of the labs, trying hard to keep up with the backbreaking demands of Cascadia. Peering over his shoulder at the notebook, she would guess that he was developing a new strain of rabies. She prodded him in the arm and he blinked his way slowly to awareness.

"Hi, Olivia," he muttered, rubbing his face.

She flushed, feeling suddenly very bad that he knew her name, yet she was barely familiar enough with him to recognize him at all. Was she turning into her father, looking at these people as drones, ants in a hive? She stole a glance at his nametag while he yawned and then made it a point to say, "Uh, hi, Roger. Sorry to wake you up."

"S'okay," he said kindly. "What did you need?"

"Um, well, I need to talk to Medea, but I can't find her. Did she go home?"

He frowned a little. "Who?"

"Medea. She's kind of new here. Really pretty, blonde bob with long bangs in front. She examined me earlier so I know she works in this division."

Roger rubbed his eyes again, grimaced at the patch of drool he'd left on his notebook, then scanned Olivia more carefully and scooted a little ways away. "You're sick, aren't you?"

She nodded miserably, feeling ragged and awful in her pajamas, knowing very well that her hair was greasy and there was one hell of a zit lurking on her chin, preparing to emerge. She undoubtedly looked as bad as she felt. "Uh, yeah."

"Well, I'm sorry about that, but we haven't hired any new women down here. Any new people at all, actually, not in over a month. She must have just been from one of the other divisions." He started shuffling papers, clearly done talking to her, but she had to stand there for a moment and catch her breath.

Olivia didn't miss much, a result of habit rather than a natural tendency towards observance, but still, she'd been drilled into having a powerful memory. She'd been trained from a very young age to notice details without error, and Medea's nametag had very clearly read 'Biological Division'. Yet here Olivia stood, and Medea was nowhere to be found. Olivia gave Roger a half-hearted wave and made a beeline straight to the folder which held emergency contact information for all the current laboratory employees. She went through the list five times before giving up; Medea was nowhere to be found.

She dragged herself back upstairs and watched the witch book warily for a while before wrapping it up in an old shirt and sticking it carefully in her trashcan, along with the rest of the medicine Medea had given her. Then she crawled into bed and closed her eyes. That lasted for perhaps ten minutes. Then she rescued the book, settled it carefully in her bookshelf, in plain sight, since hiding it would be much more suspicious if it were ever to be noticed, and tried yet again to sleep.

It was hard, though. This was a _real_ secret, one that would prompt her father into previously unheard of heights of rage if he ever found out she hadn't come straight to him with knowledge of a potentially dangerous filtration of his very headquarters. She'd have to cover her tracks tomorrow. She'd have to feed Roger a lie, mention to him that she'd found the woman she'd been looking for and simply gotten the name wrong, and then she'd have to sneak into the basement surveillance room and edit the tapes showing her interactions with Medea. Well, assuming the woman hadn't already done that herself, anyway. If she was smart enough to sneak into a place like Cascadia's own headquarters to simply plant a book, she was smart enough to do the job right and not leave any loose ends.

Olivia rolled over and pulled the blankets up over her head, suddenly chilly. What would her witch name be, if she were to ever make it into a book? Olivia the Spineless, probably, or Olivia Who Had No Guts. She shut her eyes very tight and wondered just how many humans those other famous witches had slain.

What would she _want_ her name to be? Something beautiful and dangerous. She pictured herself standing in her father's office, proudly proclaiming, "Olivia of the Razor Blossoms has prevailed! All our enemies are dead!" He would smile at her, thank her, and when he told her he loved her, he would actually mean it. They'd be friends then. He'd let her sit in on his board meetings, he'd listen and appreciate her advice, maybe he'd even give her some company shares for Christmas. Maybe he'd tell her who her mother was.

Olivia hugged her pillow tight, then tossed the blankets off. She'd grown hot again in the throes of her fever, but as far as she could tell it felt like an entirely normal one- it didn't seem like Medea's medicine had been poisonous. She thought about the witch book, and the colors shining from her skin that she didn't remember, and the distant voice she did. How was it she could recall the voice but not the words it had spoken to her?

She had seven months to study and learn about her powers. In seven months, she would be tight under the thumb of Lord Death, hiding far behind enemy lines, and surely that would be enough to make her father love her, but just in case, she would take advantage of Medea's book. She might be only half witch, but she would work twice as hard as a full-blooded sorceress.

Resolved, she closed her eyes and dreamed of colors, mostly blue.

* * *

White Star was smiling, but there was blood on his cheeks.

Midori looked away. "Clean yourself up," he said hoarsely.

White Star grabbed a handful of snow and did so, rubbing it over his face, and when his gloved hands fell, the blood and the smile were both gone. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Midori hauled the last body into the scrubby bushes, a poor cover, but there was nothing else around, and anyway the driving snow would soon cover it. "How long do we have?" He ran a hand over the rough bricks of the supposedly abandoned Russian factory they were slinking around outside of. Olivia was deep inside, setting up a series of gas canisters attached to timers, and once she planted the last one, she'd have a limited amount of time to escape before the poisonous gas was released into the unsuspecting lungs of the weapons smugglers inside, who'd made the very serious mistake of stealing product from a Cascadia shipment several months ago.

White Star frowned at him for a second, until he glanced at Midori's wrist and realized his watch had been smashed in their fight against four smugglers moments ago. "Oh. Assuming she's on schedule, five minutes."

"Mm." Midori hunkered down under cover, keeping one eye trained on the vent placed in the factory wall above them, where Olivia would be making her exit soon. He watched as White Star fastidiously cleaned his knife before sheathing it; at least the boy took care of his weapons.

"Remind me why we're not just shooting them all?" White Star asked idly, obvious growing impatient.

"You saw how many men there are," Midori admonished. Then he snorted darkly. "It's cheaper for Cascadia to poison them than it would be to hire some guns and storm the place. Cheap bastards. They don't even want their product back, they just want to send a message." He almost added something scathing about how positively cowardly it was to send in a 13-year-old girl just because it was the cheapest option, but managed to refrain. Olivia had already turned him into enough of a worrywart old biddy.

They sat on their heels for a while, shivering a little as the heat and adrenaline from killing the guards wore off, both watching the vent. The minutes ticked by, and Midori grew progressively more irritated.

White Star broke his train of thought, though. "Are you going to go after her if she's late?" he said simply, staring at the pinkish blob of snow he'd dropped after cleaning his face.

Midori bristled even as his heart sank. "You know I can't. The whole place is gonna be a deathtrap."

"Yeah."

"She'll be fine," Midori said with more confidence than he felt, stealing a glance at White Star's wristwatch and immediately wishing he hadn't. Olivia had just under seven minutes to get out of there, according to projections and assuming she was where she should be, before the gas killed her. Midori plucked a twig from the bush beside him and started ripping it apart. It was frozen, and the cracking sounds of it under his fingers were like breaking bones.

By now they were both staring at White Star's watch. "Two... one... fuck," White Star said quietly. They kept watching the second hand. The vent remained sealed.

"I really wish you hadn't smashed our fucking intercoms," Midori grumbled, standing up after another minute had passed.

White Star made a face. "Wasn't my fault, that was the airport gorillas throwing our shit around." He started worrying on his lip as he blinked at his watch. "What are we gonna do?"

"We wait, because she'd good at her job, and she's got a pretty quality gas mask," Midori said resolutely, wishing his palms weren't sweating so much inside his gloves.

The kid shifted like he wanted to kill something else. "She said herself that her mask wouldn't filter all this poison. It's a skin thing!"

"I'm aware." Midori silently raged at everything. "Still."

White Star blew out a ghostly breath. "Maybe she's coming out another door."

"They're all sealed but the main one. You know that. If she goes out the front she's dead. Too many men there."

"The guards- we could go to the front door and take them out."

Midori shook his head bitterly. "It'd take both of us, and what if she comes out here and we're gone? Anyway, there are thirty men out there, not counting the ones sittin' in the trucks." White Star grunted, out of ideas, and Midori sighed and returned his gaze to the watch. Somehow he was pretty sure that its ticking was going to rupture his eardrums, despite the whistling winds; it seemed impossibly loud. "I'll go get her in another thirty seconds."

"You're joking."

"No."

"You'll just die too," White Star said slowly, face turned away, shoulders hunched around his ears.

Midori regarded him irritably, squinting against the vicious bite of the hard whipping snow. The kid had smiled and laughed not ten minutes ago while he put a bullet in another man's heart, and true, that man had been an enemy, but he'd also been alive, thinking, wondering and dreaming and remembering. White Star didn't come close to understanding that; the boy treated killing like it was a scoreboard, a game, and just like Grey Star, all he thought about was winning. Olivia got it, though. She understood the vast, eternal scope of what she took from her victims. Midori sighed, thought about her frantic, cringing regret after her first kill, and stood up, reaching for the vent.

"You won't fit," White Star said, still turned away, but peering up at Midori out of the corner of one very green eye. The blood of the dead men shoved up under the frost-covered bushes was seeping through the snow, pink and rich, like spring flowers.

White Star was right. There was no way in hell Midori could wriggle his way through that vent. The vehemence of his reaction surprised him, and when he was done cursing and roaring and pounding his fists against the bricks, White Star was there, standing with crossed arms and a raised brow.

"I'll do it," the kid said.

Midori blinked, panting, very aware of each second ticking by. "No."

"Give me a fucking leg up!" White Star said impatiently. Midori stared at him, unable to move. Two dead children, or one, lying twisted in a tiny air vent, blue and bloated in the face- how had this mission gone so wrong? How had his choices come to these?

But White Star was shucking his thick parka impatiently, adjusting his gun holsters, and when Midori didn't move, he shoved him, and there was nothing childish about the glint in his eyes. "Don't die, okay?" Midori whispered, linking his hands together and lifting up when White Star put a foot into his palms.

The boy slipped like an eel into the vent, not bothering to screw the screen back on after ripping it off. Midori didn't realize he wasn't breathing until White Star's boots disappeared from view, and then he had to sit down and gasp, the cold air cruel in his old lungs. He started to count the seconds, throwing them out into the wind, crossing his fingers and hoping in a way he hadn't done for many years.

The time passed. He unstrapped his broken watch and flung it into the snow. It grew colder, and still nothing happened. Midori put his head back against the factory wall and closed his eyes. If guards were going to come across him, let them; he'd murder them all. Grey Star would kill him, anyway, for letting the scion of the Star Clan die so ignominously, scrabbling through ceilings after some nameless girl. Midori had walked White Star as a squalling baby through the halls of the clan compound at night, soothing him when his ill mother couldn't, he'd dried tears when the little boy suffered too much under the iron rule of Grey Star, and he'd sat through thirteen atrocious birthday parties. It was too much. It was impossible to think that the keen whirlwind of a boy he'd known for so long could be growing colder every second. Midori had worked White Star so hard to prevent this very thing from happening- yet here it was.

Then a sound filtered through the wind; Midori cracked an eye when it finally got loud enough to pierce his bitterness. Olivia was looking down at him, red-faced and sweating and wonderfully alive.

"Help me," she said, but he was already on his feet, stretching up to pull her out of the vent and down. She had a rope around her waist, leading back up into the factory.

"What?" he said blankly, holding her in his arms. She kept talking, but apparently his ears weren't working, and finally she just yanked on the rope and a shaggy white head appeared from the vent.

They got White Star out just in time, because there were distant shouts now, as the enemy discovered the unfortunate demise of their poisoned comrades within the building. Olivia was whiter than the snow, hauling White Star off into the impenetrable blizzard as if he was the only thing in the world, yanking and tugging until Midori scooped the boy up. They ran, holding hands to keep track of each other in the featureless white, as the windowless bulk of the factory faded away, and then there were a few popping thumps.

"The trucks explosives worked, then?" Olivia panted.

Midori slowed to a walk, gripping her hand very tight, unable to look at the face of the limp boy he held cradled in his arm. "Yes."

"So they'll all die stranded out here," Olivia said, voice shadowed with the awareness that White Star had never shown.

"Yes."

She pressed a hand to her forehead, one hand groping out for White Star's boneless wrist. "Take the mask off him."

Midori started, then forced himself to look down. Her gas mask was indeed on White Star's face. He tugged it off as gently as he could and handed it back to her, but she let it fall into the snow as they trudged onward, following the compass she held towards the truck that would bear them to freedom. Now that he'd looked once, Midori couldn't stop looking at White Star's drawn face.

"He's got a pulse, he's breathing well," Olivia said crisply. "I think he'll be all right. I got the mask on him fairly quickly." She was ferocious, driven, a wolverine in the storm as she pulled on Midori's hand. He felt both infantile and elderly in her presence. "We're here. Get in."

Midori obeyed, settling White Star between them on the truck's bench seat as best he could. "You know how to drive one of these things?" he muttered, feeling vaguely as though he should at least make a stab at being a proper adult. There were snowflakes on White Star's lashes; Midori brushed them off delicately.

"Uh, yes," she said, and she actually did. Somehow they were on the road after a little while, and there was enough black smoke from the vehicles they'd set bombs in, even through the snow, to curl up behind them in the rearview mirrors as she pointed the truck towards Omsk.

Midori came back to himself after half an hour or so, and he took the wheel despite her protests.

"I can do it, though," she said.

He studied the pinch of her lips and said, almost tenderly, "I know you can, but you two almost died and I'm feeling pretty stupid and very old, so why don't you let me take care of you?" She started crying immediately. He buckled her seatbelt for her once she scooted over to the passenger seat and then started the long process of wrestling with the wheel, arguing with the ice on the awful, pot-holed road, wincing and holding his breath as the truck slipped and lurched along, pretending out of politeness that he couldn't hear her stifled sobs.

"There's too much white," she said eventually, more calmly, many minutes later, as she stared out the window.

"Ain't that the gospel truth." Midori acted as if he didn't notice the way she was supporting White Star up against her shoulder.

"I should be dead," she murmured.

"I'll admit to a little curiousity about that, yeah," Midori said.

Olivia shrugged, carefully, so as not to dislodge her unconscious burden, though she checked his pulse again absently with a finger to his neck. "I got held up by some men bringing in more Cascadia crates. It took longer than it should have, and I, uh, I was going to make a run for the front door when the first gas canister went off, but then-" she gestured up at her face impatiently. "Nothing happened. I was fine. So I just headed back out the air vent, you know, um, I didn't want to get shot by going out the front door, but then this moron showed up, already half-dead..." She trailed off.

"Watch who you're calling a moron," White Star mumbled. Olivia shrieked and Midori almost went off the road.

White Star appeared unamused by their antics, and he didn't move from his position slumped against Olivia. He slit one eye to stare at Midori in a way that promised a rather extraordinary tantrum later, then closed it again and pushed more firmly against Olivia. She allowed it, though she went stiff as a ramrod, face freezing in a sort of perplexed shock, and she didn't speak again for four hours, until they were all thoroughly exhausted, when the lights of Omsk appeared in the distance.

"Witch thing, you think? That I'm not dead, I mean?" she said to Midori as they skidded through the icy streets.

"I'd lay money on it, yeah," he said thoughtfully.

Then White Star came back to consciousness for the second time, first to scramble over Olivia's lap and vomit out the window, ignoring her startled protests, and then to say drearily, "It's a witch thing. You can't be poisoned. Or diseased, I think."

She planted her feet against the truck door and pushed off towards Midori, nearly sending White Star tumbling out the window. "How do you know I can't?" she hissed, one hand on the butt of her gun. White Star's eyes widened at that, and they all scrambled chaotically about for a moment in the tiny cab of the truck, until Midori slammed on the brakes, so hard that Olivia flew forward against the dash.

"I swear to god I'll turn this fucking truck around and dump your asses back in the tundra!" he roared.

"He knows things about me!" Olivia shouted back, one hand firmly gripping White Star's hair and the other drawn back in a fist. White Star was frozen with a hand inside his parka, rummaging for his knife. Midori shook his head and leaned forward against the steering wheel.

"Shape the fuck up," he finally said. "White Star, if I know you, you've been hunting up some background on Blacktail, haven't you? It's the kind of shifty underhanded thing _you'd_ do to a teammate."

White Star's face switched rapidly between indignation and fury, then finally settled into an impressive sulk. "Yeah, maybe. So? She could be dangerous! Witches are evil!"

Olivia released his hair very deliberately and resettled herself into the seat as if she were royalty preparing to start a war. "There's a hotel up ahead," she said darkly, pointing. Midori groaned at the iciness in her voice, but nonetheless, he drove onwards.

The clerk at the rundown flophouse didn't even blink at the sight of a one-eyed giant and two scowling pre-teens booking rooms, which was a sign enough of the dangerous sort of area they were in. That was fine, though. The more unsavory types that came through, the less likely they all were to be remembered, though really it was only the more notorious Midori who had to worry about such a thing.

They walked up the stairs together and stopped at the first of the two rooms they'd rented. Olivia plucked the key deftly from White Star's hand, barked out a rough admonition for Midori to watch him, give him plenty of water, and to let her know if his pulse dropped, and then dove into the room, slamming the door so hard that Midori was surprised the shabby thing didn't fly apart into splinters.

White Star, despite being blanched and sweaty and ill from the remnants of the gas, wasn't stupid enough to miss the chill emanating from her, and he turned an inquiring face to Midori as they went next door to their own room.

"A woman scorned," Midori said airily, keeping his thoughts on the honorable way to treat teammates to himself for the moment. "And this one knows a hundred different ways to kill you. You shouldn't have snooped."

White Star vanished into the tiny, mold-scented bathroom to puke once again. He stumbled back out, collapsed on the bed, and said bleakly, "It was only common sense! She's a witch, seriously, what does she expect? Anyway, I saved her life!" He threw in a Japanese profanity that managed to raise even Midori's eyebrows.

"She saved your life, actually. She gave you her gas mask and dragged your fat ass out of there."

"Wha- well, she didn't even need the mask so that doesn't count!"

"Whatever. Just watch your back. If she decides to rough you up I'm not gonna do anything." Midori grimaced at a mysterious stain on the coverlet, debating, but his fatigue won out and he flopped down beside White Star, yanking the blankets over him.

White Star grumbled a little. "Aren't you supposed to keep an eye on my pulse or something?"

"You're fine, quit whining."

"You're a terrible teacher."

Midori's breath caught a little at that, in spite of himself. "I'd be a bit pissed if you'd gone and kicked the bucket, kid."

"Really?"

"Jesus, don't fucking make a big deal out of it. Go to sleep. We have a plane to catch in the morning, and your brother's throwing a barbecue for Joab's birthday or something. If we miss it they'll string us up. " Midori remembered the light was still on, levered himself up, snagged one of his boots from the floor, flung it at the light switch, and laid back down in the darkened room, tiredness and stress pressing heavy on his eyelid.

"Yeah, yeah." White Star's breath came steady and exhausted for a while, but then he said, almost timidly, "I guess it was pretty dumb to go in there, right?"

"It was dumb as hell and I've never been prouder," Midori said sleepily into his pillow. Then he added, "So why'd you go after her, anyway?"

White Star didn't answer. Midori suspected he really couldn't.


	4. Chapter 4

The brunette woman who took Olivia's paperwork was slender and tall, with oval glasses constantly slipping off her rather pointed nose, but she had a nice laugh. She stamped a few things, took a copy of Olivia's beautifully falsified social security card, then one of her passport, and finally handed everything back with a cheerful smile. "It all looks like it's in order. A full scholarship, huh? I bet that's nice."

"Um, yes, I got lucky," Olivia smiled back, hoping that her face didn't look as tense as it felt. Now that she was actually here, inside the walls of the Death Weapon Meister Academy, it was very hard to hang onto Maria's acting lessons. All she wanted to do was turn tail and flee at least a continent away, and no matter how hard she concentrated on controlling her breathing, her palms were sweating. The woman ushered her through a doorway into a small hall, then another door, and then- Olivia stopped in her tracks, taken aback. There was no way a room this large could be inside the building she'd just come from, and when she spun around, all she could see was the doorframe she'd walked through. There were no walls, no ceiling; nothing but blue skies and golden sands stretched out around her.

"It's a little surprising, isn't it?" said the brunette, patting Olivia's shoulder comfortingly. "Lord Death likes having room to stretch out. Come on, I'll introduce you."

"Okay," she said uncertainly. This Lord Death- well, even if he weren't a god, she would be intimidated by what he'd done. He'd stretched an empire across the entire globe, built a city and a reputation that was beyond sterling, and now he was raising the next generation of warriors. It was entirely probable that his intelligence network was also impeccable- maybe he already knew she was a secret agent and would be waiting to destroy her. What if he could sniff our her witch blood somehow? She'd learned in her readings that some people could see souls- surely a witch's soul looked different than a human's. She swallowed roughly and focused on moving her feet. The next few minutes, whether or not her cover was blown, would decide if her mission was stillborn or had a chance at success.

They slogged through the warm sand, passing under a long line of vibrantly scarlet arches, and as Olivia looked up she realized with a funny drop to her stomach that they were guillotines. The blades looked entirely real, very sharp, glinting at her in a way simultaneously cheerful and menacing, and she glanced at the chains holding them up in spite of herself, hoping they were sturdy. The brunette woman didn't seem at all fazed; in fact, she was whistling. Olivia snuck a glance at her name tag and frowned. Amaya Yumi- it was a Japanese name, but the woman didn't look at all Japanese, not even slightly. She couldn't have married into it, because her first name was just the same. Adoption, maybe? Beyond her mild curiousity at the origins of it, it was bothering Olivia for reasons she couldn't quite figure out. It sounded vaguely familiar, perhaps. She would have to remember this slender smiling woman and discover whether or not she was important.

That was for later, though. Right now Olivia was just happy there was a friendly face here in this twisty turny Death City she'd been dropped into. Perhaps it was stupid, and no doubt her father would be deeply disappointed, but half her nerves were simply from knowing she'd be attending a school for the first time in her life, having to interact with people her own age, living alone in a strange place- she was homesick and scared, and knowing it was pathetic didn't stop the feelings, only worsened them.

Suddenly, far too quickly to make any sort of sense, there was a raised platform popping up in front of them, simple smooth marble circling around what looked like a large mirror, though there was nothing really reflected in it beyond indistinct silvery murk. Olivia put her shoulders back and stuck her chin in the air, drawing on her authentic nerves to make the gestures jerky and young, making sure that she had none of the sure grace of a trained fighter, and marched up the steps. The masked, cloaked _thing_ sitting, quite calmly, with a floral teacup pinched in one oversized gloved hand, turned to her and said, "Yo."

This was a god, then, and the breath whooshed out of her in awe. "H-hello," she squeaked, trying to see beyond the holes in the mask, even though everything- the shape and fall of the cloak, the massive hands, the unnaturally tall scarecrow silhouette- told her he wasn't human.

Nonetheless, his voice was pleasant, and he motioned for her to sit down just as if he truly did value her company. She took the tea he offered gratefully, glad to have something with which to occupy her shaky hands, and was pleasantly surprised to find it made just as she liked it, unsweetened and plain. "It's nice to meet you," he prompted as she sipped.

"Oh!" She set her cup down and only just stopped herself from bowing or rising to curtsey or something. He had a sort of air to him that made those things seem necessary. "It's nice to meet you too. My name's Jennifer Mason." She watched him as she said it; it was wasted effort. She couldn't read anything at all in that bulbous ivory mask.

"What a pretty name," he said genially, and she tensed internally, but he went on right away and she relaxed. "So you're a meister, then? How did you find out, and why are you interested in enrolling in the DWMA? I hear you got one of our very best scholarships!"

He was so joyful, so friendly, bobbling around energetically. It was a little disorienting. "Uh, yes," she said, too aware of her heartbeat. "I want to help people. That's it, really, but, uh, I think it's important, you know, to have a career that matters." She slipped deeper inside Jennifer Mason's skin with every word she spoke, and it was a place awfully close to Olivia in personality, yet a million miles away in terms of life experiences. Jennifer Mason was mildly shy, a conscientious student who excelled in languages but struggled in math. She was an athlete, reasonably good at both volleyball and soccer, something Olivia was grateful had been included in her identity- it provided the perfect excuse for her muscles. Jennifer was thrifty, having grown up in a lower-middle-class family, and she enjoyed babysitting and walking her dog and had never had a boyfriend. All in all, she was almost depressingly ordinary. It was perfect, and Olivia snuggled into the other girl with something close to relief.

Lord Death hummed a little. Off to the side, Amaya waited patiently, rocking back and forth on her heels and staring up at the swirling cottony clouds. Olivia tried not to think too hard about that, because she was honestly more than a little scared of the idea that she was lying to a god, a god who could create miniature worlds right inside a school, and kept smiling. "And how did you discover your meister abilities?" he prompted after a moment.

"Oh- oh. It was one of the recruitment seminars you put on at, my high school. I didn't know before. I'd never met a weapon."

"How nice! It's so good to know we're reaching the youth," he said, and though the mask didn't move, it sounded just as if he were beaming at her. His voice was the audible equivalent of overexcited puppies and rainbows.

"You reached me," she said, deciding that it was the sort of answer Jennifer would have, putting a smile on and taking another sip of her tea. The mirror behind Lord Death was still vaguely blank, the guillotines remained sharp and ready, and the sand still stretched on to the limits of her sight. The only things moving were the puffy white clouds. The whole place had a sense of timelessness to it, as if she could step back through the door and find that not a single second had passed.

Lord Death, suddenly in possession of her file, opened it and appeared to read. She waited, finished her tea, and then after a moment of cloud-gazing returned her gaze to her cup, only to find it miraculously refilled. She set the cup down with a clink and didn't drink any more after that.

A few minutes later, he lifted his mask back to her. "It all looks in order. I must say, you seem like a bright little thing, Jennifer, but my academy is not like a civilian school. There will still be math and science and reading, but you're going to have to run and fight too, and you're going to have to form a partnership with whatever weapon you find."

"I can do that," she said, a bit more confidently. "I work well with other people." That was true. She and Midori had had a perfect success rate since being paired up, always accomplishing the objective, and she'd even managed not to murder Nova in his sleep since he'd begun tagging along. She knew how to play off the strengths of others.

"Mm. Well, that's good, but can you kill something if you have to?"

She went still and felt her eyes widen. The concern in his tone was real, and the worried little tilt of his head was a human gesture. He really wanted to make sure she could handle this kind of life. "I can," she said after a moment. "If they deserve it, uh, I can. I mean I don't want to kill anyone good, but that's not what we do here, is it? We fight for the good and kill the bad."

"Yes indeed, Jennifer," he answered, shutting her file with a snap and handing it to Amaya, who'd materialized at his shoulder with astonishing speed. Olivia eyed her, and yes, there they were; practical black sneakers, tightly laced for ease and surety of movement, at odds with her otherwise professional dark suit. Even the staff here were warriors. Lord Death slid a form across the low table in front of her, and Amaya tossed her a pen. She made sure to fumble it; it wouldn't do to advertise overly snappy reflexes. "All I need is your autograph!" he said jokingly, waving his big hands around.

"What is it?" she asked, blinking at the spiky lettering on the paper.

"Just our code of conduct. Really, our only rules are that you must respect the other students and the staff, even if you don't like them, you must never use your weapon in anger against another student, no drugs or alcohol, no skipping class, rules about allowances... the usual," he chirped. He raised his cup of tea to his mask and, though she'd seen it full when he lifted it, it was empty when it his his saucer on the way back down.

She skimmed it. He hadn't lied. "Okay," she said, only a little trepidation creeping through into her voice. She reined in her secret delight at how well things were going, stoppered her tentative hopes that her father would be proud, and put pen to ink, signing her fake name easily; she'd spent almost an hour a day for the past month just writing it, to make certain it flowed naturally.

Amaya picked the contract up and looked before sliding it back into the file. "Welcome, Jennifer Mason," she said kindly, with a little wink, as if she knew just how nervous Olivia really was.

"Ah, thank you." She stood up, sensing that this audience was coming to a close, and gave Lord Death a tentative little wave.

He flashed her a peace sign filled with so much enthusiasm that she would have sworn she felt her hair blow back from the sheer force of it. "Miss Yumi here will show you to your dormitory! Your luggage should already be there. It's so nice to have you here!" He stood up then, sketching a short bow, and she'd been right; he was very, very tall. "Welcome to the Death Weapon Meister Academy!"

She showed him all her teeth, the biggest, sparkliest grin she could muster. It would be nice being around such happy people, such innocent intentions, and her mission would undoubtedly keep her here for at least several months, if not a good year, depending on how fast it took her to get the information her father wanted. She wouldn't let her guard down- she'd been trained too well for that- but it would still be relaxing to know that not everyone around her had a gun tucked in their belts or designs on her blood. "Thank you! I'm looking forward to it!"

She felt him watching her all the way back through the guillotines to the freestanding door, and the prickle of it on her back threw her into confusion. She couldn't figure him out, couldn't see all the minute facial ticks, the shifts in weight that usually told her what someone was thinking, and it made her uneasy. That ridiculous excitement- not at all what she'd expected from the god of death. The taste of the tea he'd given her still lingered on her tongue, rich and strong.

* * *

Her dormitory room was sparsely decorated, but it had everything necessary for a student; an attached bathroom for just her and whoever her roommate would be, a full-length mirror, a closet, two plush beds separated by a curtain, two identical nightstands bearing two twin alarm clocks shaped like cartoonish skulls, and two nice large desks already filled up with textbooks. The walls were a creamy, gentle gray, very soothing and neutral. Olivia sighed; being a student meant getting up at the crack of dawn for classes, and she'd never liked that much, even if her body had long ago become accustomed to it. She was a night owl through and through.

She'd taken her schedule from Miss Yumi, along with, to her surprise, the little bag of pocket money, and then the map. That was the first thing she looked at, and she took this time alone to begin the process of memorizing it. The front side showed the halls and classrooms of the academy itself, and the grounds surrounding it, and the flip side showed the city. It was much bigger than she'd realized, and she frowned, because knowing her way in and out of the school was going to be essential. The academy was impressive; she saw colorful squares labeled as gyms, gardens, splendidly large lecture halls, and even what seemed to be a hot springs. There were several mysterious blank spots she immediately noticed that should have been labeled, but weren't, and most were too large to be broom closets or stairwells. She traced her eyes over them, remembered; she'd examine them one by one and excavate all Lord Death's secret weapons technology. The hope flared up again, along with the imagined smile she'd never actually seen on her father's face, but she quashed it mercilessly and folded up the map, stashing it in the drawer of her bedside table, choosing one of the beds arbitrarily, as they were identical.

Her sparse, rather ragged luggage was sitting on her bed, and she settled crosslegged on the black quilt to begin unpacking. The bed was just as soft and springy as it looked and she abandoned unpacking to fall back on it with a sigh.

"Hello," came a pleasant, smooth voice. "Are you my new roomie?"

Oliva sat up too fast, startled, and cursed her reflexes. The Egyptian mummy standing in the doorway eyed her with a muted smile. Oliva felt lightheaded, and not just from being in the spotlight of such a strange creature; she'd received an excess of friendliness today. It was going straight to her head. "Um, hi," she answered, a tad cautiously, examining this new person more closely. The mummy was really a girl, with very dark skin peeking through the bandages swathing her limbs, and neat dreadlocks tied up with a blue bandanna. "My name's Jennifer. Jennifer Mason," Olivia said after a second, realizing she hadn't yet introduced herself. Her heart was going like galloping horse again, beating relentlessly against her ribs, and she wished desperately for the familiar comfort of the laboratories.

"I'm Mirabelle Nygus. Call me Mira, though, please," the other girl said, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms. She hadn't taken a single step into the room yet, and she didn't seem inclined to, so for an awkward moment they just stared at each other. Mira had eyes so wolfishly blue that for a split second Olivia wondered if she were blind.

"It's nice to meet you?" Olivia tried at last, staring somewhere at Mira's bandaged shoulder. Any other place than Death City, Olivia would have assumed the girl had been horrifically wounded, but simply walking through the town from the bus station to the Academy this morning, she'd seen no less than three people with horns, one with a tail that appeared entirely real, and at least five wearing outlandish costumes, most of which involved bones. Abnormal _was_ normal here, apparently.

Mira squinted at her for a moment longer, but then flashed that glittering smile again. "You too, roomie." She finally walked in, tossing her backpack down on the other bed. "You're a brand new student, aren't you? First year?"

"Uh. Yes." Olivia tried wildly to remember what she should say next, but nothing came to mind. All she could think about was guns and blizzards and blood. How on earth was she ever supposed to pass as a normal girl?

"Me too," Mira muttered, staring down into her backpack for a moment as if it held the wisdom of the ages. She sounded rather bitter.

"You look older than me," Olivia tried cautiously.

Mira shrugged, pulling a stuffed lamb out of her backpack and setting it on her bedside table. She then turned the entire pack upside down, dumped it out, and began sorting through the landslide of clothes that exploded across her bed. "I'm fifteen. I was here last year, but I didn't pass my finals, so I'm retaking first year."

"Fifteen? Really?" Olivia said dubiously. Mira was tall and smoothly curved; she could have said she was eighteen and Olivia would have bought it hook, line and sinker.

"Really," Mira said genially. "I promise. I'll show you my ID if you want."

Olivia almost fell off the bed. "No! No! I, um, I didn't mean to offend you-" She'd screwed this up royally, now she'd have to spend the year with a terrifyingly beautiful girl who hated her, it was all her nightmares come to horrifying life. She whimpered and tucked her chin under her folded arms when her words gave out.

But Mira just chuckled, brows lifting, though she didn't make eye contact. "You didn't, why would I be offended? Relax." She held up a pair of camouflage-patterned pants to fold.

Olivia wracked her brains for Maria's words of wisdom- smile, don't be too eager, let them talk about themselves, offer a genuine compliment- "Those are cute pants," she blurted, and then immediately felt her face flame up. How had she never noticed how painfully awkward she was? Talking with the lab geeks had never been this hard- but then, they were usually talking business. Talking with Nova wasn't this scary, but she had Midori with her, and anyway it didn't matter if Nova liked her. She felt very raw, and quite as if she might cry.

"Thanks," Mira said cheerfully, but then she stopped folding and eyed Olivia where she sat huddled in a tight ball of misery on her bed. "Are you okay?" She said it almost reluctantly, as if the words had forced themselves out of her mouth.

Be honest, Maria had said. Share a small secret and it will form a bond. "I'm nervous," Olivia confessed, curling up tighter, knees to her chest. "I, um, I'm- shy, I guess, and I miss home." Her voice cracked on the last word.

"Oh," Mira murmured sympathetically, shaking her head. "You- aw. You shouldn't be nervous." She abandoned her clothing to scoot to the edge of her bed and reach out to pat Olivia's shoulder. "I was nervous too, trust me, all the freshmen are. Once classes get going you'll make friends and stuff."

Olivia flushed again, feeling like a puppet, rather numb and jerky. What the hell was she supposed to do with her face? And her hands? She had too many body parts and they were all suddenly floppy and ungraceful. "Thanks," she finally croaked out. "You're nice."

Mira blinked and cycled rapidly through surprise and amusement into something that looked oddly like sorrow. "I try," she said, picking at a section of her bandaging. She was in a simple black t-shirt, but her arms were entirely wrapped up, down to the first knuckle of her hands, leaving only slender fingers free. Olivia peeked up and was immediately intrigued. Why did this girl look so serious? Why did she keep glancing at the stuffed lamb as if it were going to bite her, and why did her face slip into a faint scowl when they weren't talking?

Olivia resolved to figure out the mystery of the mummy later. Right now she should probably push through her jetlag and unpack. At some point within the next three days she had to get a message to Cascadia and let them know she was in safely. At the thought, she perked up a bit, because not only would she get to talk to Midori- who, being the ever-confident and no-nonsense man he was, would no doubt have some tips for her on conversing without dying of nervousness- but her father would be pleased to hear the news. This was such a big deal for him. He'd been working so hard to make sure she'd be successful, and if she could get the right information for him, there was no telling how far Cascadia could rise.

She leaned over and pulled the map back out of her bedside table, then prodded the little coin purse of her weekly allowance. "There's a coffee shop not far from the dorms," she said softly. "Would you- um- do you want to go-" Her voice cracked again and she had to close her eyes for a moment, wondering if her face would ever stop imitating the surface of the sun. "Get coffee? My treat."

Mira fixed her with those blue, blue eyes. It was not unlike the feeling Olivia got when she was lying on an examination table under someone's scalpel. This Mirabelle girl was sharp, that much was obvious- she wasn't stupid. Every line of her screamed that she never missed anything, so why had she failed her exams last year? The laser-beam inspection softened after a second, though, and Mira said with an oddly tentative grin, "Seriously? Sure! That's Deathbuck's you're talking about, it's a nice place. Wanna go right now?"

"Sure," Olivia whispered, barely restraining her wriggle of joy. Then she realized something; Mira didn't want to be here either, for whatever reason. She felt an answering grin stretch across her face out of sheer relief.

* * *

Over the course of her very first week ever going to school, Olivia found out quite a few things. She learned that a vast percentage of the girls seemed to value the attractiveness of a skirted uniform over the more practical trouser option, regardless of how impractical it would be in battle. She learned that the soup in the cafeteria was never, ever to be eaten, not if she wanted to live, anyway, but everything else was delicious. The teachers were some of the most eccentric people she'd ever met, and considering that she'd grown up around lab rats with obsessions like human cloning and nuclear missile technology, that was saying something. She found out that homework was _hard_ and awful, and people would push and shove past her in the hallways without even saying sorry, and everyone was so chatty and friendly that it was terrifying.

The last thing was probably what made her most uncomfortable. There was just so much touching- it made her skin crawl even as an odd sort of jealousy sprouted like mold in her belly. She would skulk past groups of laughing students, and she'd see them hugging each other, or sitting in laps, or with arms slung around each other's shoulders, and she'd go hollow even as she cringed away. Who'd touched her, in her life? She literally could never recall her father doing so, not even once, and when the lab techs did so, it was always for a purpose. Midori was much more demonstrative, or at least he'd become so once they'd grown closer, ruffling her hair or punching her in the shoulder, but he'd desisted once he'd realized how uncomfortable it made her. He did the same things to Nova, though, easy little touches taken as a matter of course- it was the way a family touched, that much Olivia knew, instinctively. That level of comfort and trust only came with a lifetime of knowing. She didn't think she knew how to touch without hurting, so she drifted around the halls, staring at her feet, a little lonely island in a sea of strangers.

Mira did the same, oddly enough, except her footsteps were followed by whispers and open staring. Mira put her head up high and walked like she was royalty, ignoring it. By Wednesday Olivia was rabidly curious, and by Friday, it was eating her up, so she trailed Mira from a distance during lunch and tried to figure out what was going on.

She caught little whispers as she walked in Mira's wake. A blonde girl said cattily, "She looks like hell, doesn't she? But what do you expect. The guilt's probably eating her up."

A skinny redheaded boy said in a hushed tone, "I can't believe they let her back in!"

This was getting interesting, and it got even more so when Mira spent the entire weekend in her bed, facing the wall, nothing but a blanket-covered lump for two days straight. Olivia persevered in her sneaky attempts to figure out the mystery, and next Monday, she got her answer rather unexpectedly.

She was trudging across the large central plaza, late for her first class but not really inclined to run- she had to keep her grades at a reasonable level, because Jennifer Mason was a good student who cared about that sort of thing, but _Olivia_ had decided at some point that the rigid confines of school weren't for her. She felt suffocated and alone, and she didn't like it. Everyone in this place underlined the holes in her heart. Beyond her discomfort, she was irked at the lack of progress she'd made so far in her mission. Being a lost new student had provided the perfect cover for being places she shouldn't, and she'd used it lavishly before it expired. She'd examined all the odd, unlabeled spots on the map and had found only walls or balconies or storage rooms, nothing at all pertaining to hidden weapons information. Midori had been soothing and encouraging when she'd checked in last night to report her status, but she'd caught Nova snickering in the background, and it hurt more than she wanted to admit.

So when she rounded a corner and came across Mira curled on the ground, hands protecting her head as three girls and one boy kicked and punched and scratched her, Olivia had quite a bit more frustration built up than she usually did.

"What are you doing?" she said silkily, in her father's coldest tones. She let her bookbag drop to the floor and only just stopped herself from falling into a combat stance.

The assault stopped as they all jumped. For a moment, there was silence, broken only by a wet cough from Mira. "I'll say it again," Olivia spat, taking a step forward. "What do you think you're doing?"

One of the girls flushed and looked away, but another stepped forward, fists clenched and, of all things, tears in her eyes. "She deserves it! Mind your own business!"

Olivia fell back a little, confused by the passionate conviction in the girl's face. She really didn't know Mira well at all- they'd had a rather nice chat over their coffee, but since then, her roommate had almost acted like she was avoiding contact. She'd been polite, but nothing approaching warm, and Olivia would be lying if she said it didn't twinge a little. But still- four against one.

She looked at Mira, at the hands still wrapped protectively around her skull. Those hands were clean and unmarred. "She didn't fight them," she said in total confusion, to no one in particular. The confident, calm, untouchable Mira she'd observed over the past week wouldn't have taken a beating lying down- would she? It didn't make sense. Olivia's senses were telling her that something was very wrong here, beyond simple school bullying. God, in the field she would have just knocked them all out, been done with it, and moved on, but here in the Academy everything she did would follow her. What if she did the wrong thing? She felt sweaty and young.

The boy stepped forward now, and his hands weren't so clean. He had a nasty glint in his eye as he said roughly, "This bitch got our friend killed. We're getting our pound of flesh and it's none of your concern. Scram, first year."

Olivia seemed to be frozen in place, her initial violent indignation quickly replaced by doubt and fear. Her stomach was churning uncomfortably. These students were all at least a year older, and she had a hunch they could make her life miserable if they really wanted.

But then Mira gave a wracking sob and unfolded herself to peer at Olivia from between loosened bandages. "I didn't," she said violently. "I didn't. I fought. It was the witch, I tried to save her! I did! She was dead by the time I ran!"

"You shouldn't have left her!" the boy bellowed, rounding on Mira with a look on his face Olivia had never seen on anyone before, a mix of rage and sorrow and loathing. He drew back his foot and kicked Mira, brutally, straight in the stomach, and her blue eyes went very round as she collapsed again.

Mira could have gotten up. She could have at least tried to crawl away, or shouted for help, but she didn't. She just tucked her head under her arms and took it. The girls were silent now, watching in a sort of half-hearted fascination, as the beating went on, the boy's fists and feet making meaty thumps Olivia was all too familiar with.

A witch- it was obvious what had happened. A witch had killed Mira's partner, and Olivia would guess that was why Mira had failed out last year. A witch- Olivia turned to run, blind, sickened, but then she glanced back at Mira and saw that the bandages under her eyes were damp.

"Get off her," Olivia screeched, and she'd snatched the boy's collar and flung him a good distance off before she had even really decided what on earth she was doing. He blinked at her for a moment.

"Jennifer-" Mira muttered. Her voice sounded shattered.

Olivia ignored it, moving to stand between her roommate and the other students. "She's my roommate," she said, feeling the same burning fingers clutch at her that she'd felt when she'd dragged Nova through the airshafts in Russia, panting and straining, desperately fighting for someone else. Her insides were blazing, but her skin felt cool, and her eyes were stinging as if she were going to cry. She'd expected to be nervous, to be an outcast, to be painfully awkward in this new world, but she had never imagined that the violence of her true life would extend into this one, as naive as that sounded, given that it was a school for fighters. It was just that civilians were always so afraid when they heard gunshots or glimpsed a hidden blade- somehow she'd never dreamed they could be just as bloodthirsty as Cascadia. The taint of it felt like a betrayal. "She's my roommate and don't you dare touch her! I'd like to see you all take on a full-blooded witch! She was a freshman! What was she supposed to do?"

She bit off the last word with a snarl, feeling very cold now, and she _was_ in a combat stance, fists up, but she didn't care. This was a school for soldiers, so a soldier she would be. They all just stared at her. "Fuck off," one of the girls said finally. It came out rather lamely. Olivia showed them her teeth the way Nova did when he scented blood, and they leaned back as one, but they didn't move, supported by their superior numbers.

Then the boy got to his feet, face growing steadily redder, jaw grinding audibly in the silent hall as he stalked forward. Mira gave a muted squeak of pain from behind Oliva, who didn't move. Instead she smiled as the boy came forward. She didn't enjoy hurting people, but she thought maybe she was going to enjoy this. She settled her weight back, met his eyes, and for a split second he stuttered as if he'd glimpsed a ghost-

Then the barrel of a rifle snaked out of nowhere, tripped him neatly, and he fell flat on his face before Olivia could even start to swing her fist.

The rifle sizzled and snapped into Miss Yumi, who had a rather severe expression on her face beneath her glasses. A man peeked out from behind her shoulder and Olivia cringed as she recognized him- Mr. Marquis, the teacher in her Kishin Biology class, the one she was currently late for. He was rather short, broadly built, always leaning forward with the pent-up ferocity of a loaded rocker launcher, and his messy shock of orange hair only added to his warlike countenance.

Needless to say, Olivia lived in bone-deep fear of the man. He seemed to take deep, sadistic pleasure in forcing her to stutter passages from the textbook out loud.

"Oh god," she said blankly, letting her fists drop as Miss Yumi hauled the boy to his feet by the neck of his shirt. "I'm going to be expelled."

She must have gone rather white at the thought of her father's fury, because Mr. Marquis was by her side in an instant, a hand on her elbow as if he thought she might faint. "Easy there," he muttered, apparently unperturbed by her instant shift away from his touch. "The Academy doesn't expel students for protecting one another." He turned with awful slowness to the cowering group of students who'd been beating Mira. "Much less for standing up to _honorless slugs_!"

He boomed out the last words like a foghorn and Olivia decided that it was best to just stand against the wall and try to disappear. Miss Yumi snickered a little as everyone jumped, and Olivia realized that Mr. Marquis must be her meister- it had been he who'd tripped up the boy, and it was he who swept forward like a charging bull, huffing and puffing, to haul the errant students off in what seemed to be the direction of the Death Room.

Miss Yumi remained, crouching down to Mira. "Come on, up, we're off to the nurse's office," she said, briskly, but not ungently. She didn't ask what had precipitated the attack. It seemed she knew what had transpired last year and could easily guess.

Mira did so, wincing all the while in a way that made Olivia suspect a broken rib, not saying a word, bandages drooping all around her in a rather pathetic kind of way. Miss Yumi put an arm around her shoulders for support and they started moving off.

"Are you coming, Mason?" Miss Yumi said, looking back over her shoulder.

Olivia blinked. "Me?" As if there was anyone else around in the deserted hall. "Uh- okay." She darted after them, falling in beside Mira and wondering what the hell she'd gotten herself into.


	5. Chapter 5

"-And then he came at me, you know, just right at me, didn't even have his hands up, the worst form I've ever seen, and Mira was crying, and-"

Midori could only smile as he listened to Olivia's enthusiastic, if hushed, voice coming through the radio sitting before him. She took a breath and he stepped in, leaning towards the transmitter as he spoke. "Sounds like you were quite the hero, girlie."

She giggled breathlessly. God, she sounded young right now, a schoolgirl babbling about her day- it was so sweet his teeth hurt. "Not really, it was probably a bad idea, but she wasn't even guilty of anything, there was no reason for them to hurt her-" Then, in an instant, she was all seriousness. "Have we verified her yet?"

"Checks out clean. She is who she says," White Star put in, leaning across the table awkwardly to get his mouth close enough to the transmitter.

"Mmm." Olivia sounded distinctly unimpressed with his interjection. She was still pissed at him for his digging into her past, it seemed. "Good." Then she went off on a tangent about her classes and how much homework she had and how amazing it was that people actually liked school.

Midori let her ramble for a while longer, watching White Star idly sharpen a knife, then said gently, "How's the mission going?"

A beat of silence, then, so shakily that he cursed himself for bringing it up, even though it was their entire purpose, "Uh, well, not great. I looked in all the really obvious places, but the layout's pretty efficient. I think if they have what we need, it'll either be in the secure stockroom of the library or underground." Her voice was timid and soft, obvious contrast to her excited nattering of moments earlier; Christ, but she was almost as screwed up as White Star, just as afraid of failure, though for different reasons. What a pair of oddball apprentices he'd ended up with in his old age.

White Star scowled at the radio, shuddering. He hated going underground. Last year, they'd been forced to take cover in a cave for a while, and he'd slaughtered four men just to vent his temper when they'd eventually made their escape. It probably explained why he was being so contrary lately; they'd holed up in the partially collapsed basement of an abandoned building once city over from Death City, and it was the most stereotpyically dank and dismal basement Midori had ever seen, unfortunately. He glared at the boy, who only made a horrible face in return. "Underground?"

"Um, yes, there's a pretty extensive system of catacombs down there. Students aren't permitted without a reason, but my second day I wandered down there and ran into a teacher."

"Pretended you were lost, eh?"

"Yes."

"Good girl." Midori said it because it was obvious she needed to hear it, ignoring the bemused snicker from White Star. Well, he kicked the kid under the table, but mostly he ignored it.

He could practically hear the blush in her voice. "I learned it's got cells down there, for prisoners, and storage, too, and probably torture, I'd guess, but apparently it's definitely off limits to students. It's really the only place I can think of where what we want would be, but I'm still going through the library catalog, so-"

"The library catalog?" White Star interrupted, thunking his freshly sharpened knife into the surface of the table as he lurched forward again. "Why are you wasting time doing that? They're not gonna have classified information sitting on a shelf where any idiot can check it out." He deftly evaded Midori's kick this time.

"I'm in here and you're not," Olivia muttered, a little sulkily. "They're really trusting here. I mean, curfew isn't until ten at night!" She sounded so perfectly shocked at that fact, as if the students were being allowed to prance around naked or something. Midori took a disgruntled moment to wonder just how strictly confined her life was under Cascadia. "It's possible that there's an old book or something with the information we need, for the senior student's research projects, or something."

Her voice was a little muffled. "You chewin' your nails again?" Midori said shrewdly. The girl gnawed on her hands like a beaver on a tree.

She squeaked. "N-no!"

"Right," Midori said, snorting.

White Star was gazing at the radio with an open mouth. Midori grinned and watched the reluctant respect for Olivia dawn slowly over the boy's face. She was doing her job, and well, leaving no stone unturned, thinking of every possibility, and after a moment White Star admitted as much. "That makes sense, I guess," he said hesitantly.

"Really?" Olivia said, in clear shock.

"They're damn stupid if they just set it there on a shelf, though," White Star snapped. Midori was deeply amused to see a faint flush rise to the boy's cheeks.

"I- well, yes, and I suppose if it was there it would have been cited in one of the senior research reports Cascadia looked at, but you never know," she said carefully. "The library is massive. It could be tucked away somewhere. The librarian says she doesn't even know where everything is."

White Star got a faraway look in his eyes, then yanked the radio and transmitter closer to him and said, "What if you worked there?"

"In the library?"

"Yeah. If you were a student worker, you know, an assistant-"

"Oh! I'd have access to the back storeroom, all the files, all the senior- and staff-only books-"

"You could look at all the high level stuff! Even if it's not on the weapons, I bet there's still loads of valuable stuff in there!"

"And storage- I've seen them wheel books down to the catacombs- if I can get clearance down there- it's perfect!"

"Oh, fuck yes!" White Star leaned back with a satisfied cheshire grin.

"What just happened?" Midori said nonchalantly to the empty air. "Oh, I know- you two morons worked together. Because you're a team. And look at that, a great plan, whaddaya know."

White Star made a nauseous sort of face, frozen like an ogre as he hunched over the tabletop, and Olivia gave a clear huff of startlement before saying hastily, "Uh- well- I have to go back in to the nurse's station. I'll reconnect in three days. Bye." The radio clicked off.

"We're not a team," White Star said after a second of quiet.

"No?" Midori said casually.

White Star pulled another knife out of thin air and started to sharpen it, lips pressed into a stern line. "You and I, we're Clan, but Blacktail's not."

He sounded unusually contemplative, but there was an unhealthy twist to his tone. Midori lifted a finger to scratch at his temple under his headband, leaning back to throw his boots up on the table, making the radio jump. "What's your point, kid?"

"When I went into the factory, in Russia, with the gas? I knew she would be fine, because she's a witch. I knew she could probably get me out."

Midori sighed and stopped him with a raised finger. "Am I gonna wanna kick your ass after you tell me this?" he said directly. It hurt, even having to say that, but White Star was so damn manipulative and cunning lately, so cynical, and probably it was a little fucked up, but the contrast to bright, reaching Olivia made his darkness even bleaker. Midori didn't _want_ to play favorites, but he wasn't blind enough to pretend he didn't have one, deep down, and it surely wasn't White Star, as much as he loved the boy.

"No! I mean, I figured if she thought I cared enough about her to risk my life, she'd owe me or something."

Midori stood up abruptly, nearly whanging his head on a splintery beam of the low ceiling, but he didn't care. "You fucking little shit! Why do you want her to owe you, huh, what are you planning that you can't go about direct like a man?"

White Star slit his eyes at Midori. "Dude, we're ninja, being direct is sort of frowned upon," he pointed out. Then, his brother's words as clear as day, "We do what we have to do, shadows or not."

Midori didn't back down. In fact, he did his best to loom over the boy. Just when he thought he'd seen a spark of something salvageable, something honorable, it would get snuffed out in Grey Star's shadow. The disappointment was almost too sour to bear. "Answer the question!"

"If she trusts us, maybe we can get her to join the Clan!" White Star barked, jumping up.

Midori squinted at him in mild disbelief. That certainly wasn't what he'd expected to hear. "You're recruiting now, is that it? Pretty sure that ain't in your job description."

White Star shook his head, sinking back into the chair and folding his arms onto the tabletop. "She doesn't really feel the cold, have you noticed?" he said eventually, much more calmly, staring at the silent radio. "She gets goosebumps, she shivers, but you and I will be blue with icicles for eyelashes and to her it'll just be like autumn. Chilly, you know? She's got vision like fucking binoculars and I don't think she even knows it. She's strong, too. And the poison thing! I mean, kind of shitty reflexes, but she's not normal. She could be really great someday."

Midori scrubbed his hands over his face, leaning back against the chill stone wall. He really didn't know what to think. It wasn't as if he hadn't noticed Olivia's little oddities; he had, long before he'd discovered her heritage, but he'd put it down to the results of a lifetime of training. Perhaps he'd been blinded by his own strangeness, anyway; it was hard for a six-foot-nine behemoth to be objective about the physiology of others, especially when surrounded by prodigies like those in the Clan. But was she _that_ strange? He thought hard and decided that no, she wasn't anything amazingly far from an ordinary spy, except for the one day in Alaska when she'd exploded into colors. She was talented and good at her job, especially considering her age, but in the Clan, a collection of phenoms from around the world, she'd be considered average.

Then again, Grey Star judged on aim and agility and killing lust, not heart and soul, of which she had an excess.

Anyway, Cascadia had kept her around for this long, and Midori could still picture the needle marks marring her arms; such ugly things, the hallmark of a junkie on her fresh youthful skin.. They wouldn't have kept doing research on her for so many years if there weren't something there, which implied that her untapped potential might be more than anyone had realized. She hadn't really spoken about her witch blood since Alaska, but now and again on a mission Midori would catch her eyeing her own hands with too-bright eyes and tight invisible tension radiating from her skin, a tornado in a shotglass, and it was all too obvious what she was thinking. If he knew her at all, she hadn't left such a useful thing as witch blood dormant, though hell if he had any idea how their abilities even worked. But she was too curious, and first and foremost, she saw herself as a tool, not a girl or a daughter or anything else. She wouldn't even understand how _not_ to reach for something so potentially useful to Cascadia. What exactly could she do with her abilities? He settled a hand over the place where his eye should be, trying in vain to picture sweet, quiet Olivia wearing the joyful killing face of the witch who'd taken it.

White Star propped his chin on his folded arms and stared at Midori for a long while as the older man thought, then said softly, "A witch. She could make us stronger."

"She could," Midori said after a moment, brows shooting up. He'd honestly never considered it, even though she'd kept requesting him as her support for missions, even after they'd become so easy around each other. The quivering little girl with puke on her lips of a year ago, drenched in enemy blood- she would be slaughtered her first day among the Star Clan, but the girl he'd seen lately, the one with a little more backbone and a little more spark, just might make it. "She could. One day. Not yet."

White Star wilted a little. "No? Grey Star'd be so stoked if I brought home a witch, though-"

"She is not a thing," Midori said harshly, pointing a finger at White Star. "She is a person. Maybe she wants to stay in Cascadia."

The kid raised a skeptical eyebrow, snagging one of his knives from the table and restarting the sharpening process all over again, even though it was obviously not needed. He did it like it was therapy. "I don't get that vibe, but you never know, I guess. Just keep it in mind, all right?"

"Yeah." Midori forced a smile onto his face even as his eyesocket gave a twinge. He should probably give his own arsenal a good sharpening, but it could wait. "Dinner?"

White Star, ever hungry, almost tackled him, forgetting for a dangerous moment about the blade in his hand. "Yes! Food! Feed me!"

Midori's ears rang. "Keep your voice down, you black hole," he chided, but he was laughing.

* * *

Olivia took her transmitter apart carefully, piece by piece, and each section was hidden away in a different place. One part went into the hollow heel of her boots, the other slid securely into a pocket sewn into her bra between her breasts, and the other she stuck inside a false pen in her bookbag.

Then she took a moment to look in the mirror, leaning forward over the marble sink. She looked tired. She'd said she needed a moment to calm down while Mira's injuries were being treated, and Miss Yumi- who apparently functioned as the school nurse as well as a part-time secretary- had pointed her to the bathroom adjacent to the medical room. Bathrooms were the best for reporting in to Midori and Nova. Girls were known to spend a lot of time there, though she personally had never quite understood that whole stereotype, the doors locked, and the likelihood of there being any kind of camera was almost nonexistent. Plus, when she was in her dorm room, the sound of a shower running was an easy way to make sure Mira couldn't catch anything.

But now her report was over, and Midori's warm mirth was gone from her ear, and she had to go face the stiff, stone-eyed girl that she'd rescued for some reason she didn't even understand. If she could go back in time, she would do something else. She would have run for a teacher, or shouted or something. Doing a thing like this- it brought attention to her, it made her stand out. It had been a mistake. Midori would include it when he sent his updates to Olivia's father, of course, because that's what he was being paid to do, but he probably wouldn't relay Mr. Deering's scathing reply back to her. He wouldn't ever see his actions as being protective, but they were. She knew it and she didn't mind at all, though a part of her wondered frowningly if she were really that weak, to need babying. She realized her reflection was smiling, and for a moment she was so heart-stoppingly terrified that her vision swam, but then it occurred to her that _she_ had been smiling too.

She splashed cool water on her face with a sigh before cracking the door and peering out.

"Come on out, Jennifer, it's fine," Mira said dully. She bore Miss Yumi's pokes and proddings with the same nearly catatonic passiveness with which she'd handled her attack. It didn't fit her at all.

"Oh, uh, okay." Olivia crept out and hopped up on the hospital bed next to her roommate. Miss Yumi sent her a reassuring little smile, pushed her glasses back up her sharp nose, then got up and wandered over to a closet, humming. Bottles clinked as she leaned inside.

"How hurt are you?" Olivia asked eventually, feeling the weight of the uncomfortable quiet pressing down on her.

Mira shrugged, then winced. "I'm just a little bruised up."

Olivia studied her. The bandages criss-crossing her cheeks were still damp, but she wasn't crying any more. She was sitting very still, hands clutching the bedrail. Even her breathing looked tentative. Oliva leaned over the gap between the beds and hauled back her hand as if she were going to slap Mira silly; Mira started, flinched, and clutched her side.

"I _knew_ it," Olivia said in satisfaction, letting her hand fall and leaning back. "Your ribs."

Miss Yumi's dark head appeared from around the closet door, glasses glinting threateningly. "You didn't tell me your ribs hurt, Nygus!"

Mira blinked. "I- uh-" It appeared even she was a little afraid of Miss Yumi. Thinking back on the nurse's face when she'd snapped from rifle to human, Oliva felt that was probably a wise choice.

Miss Yumi sent her patient a long, deeply threatening stare before returning to the closet. "I'll patch you up, don't you worry," she said, a bit muffled, but the unpleasant note in her tone was clear. Mira winced again, letting her head fall very carefully into her bandaged hands.

"Thanks," she said after a moment.

"Uh- me?" Olivia squeaked, taking a second to realize who was being addressed.

Mira tilted her head a little and fixed her with one icy eye. "Yes, you, Miss Vigilante Justice. Denny would've left you nothing but a red stain, you know. He's very talented."

"Denny- the boy. Oh." Inside, Olivia was practically giggling at the thought of Denny being able to win a fight. He'd left his face entirely uncovered, unprotected, obviously intending to try to take her out with a punch to the gut. She could have cracked his jaw, tripped and pinned him, or flipped him over her shoulder into a chokehold as he charged; there were a million ways she could have defended against him.

"Why is your face all creepy?" Mira said suspiciously.

Olivia hastily rearranged her features into a more neutral position, a little disturbed at herself. It had been a very, very long time since she'd had anything approaching fun during a fight, possibly never, and here she was, smiling and happy at the thought of one. "I think it was because he deserved it. I mean he really deserved it. If I had, uh, hurt him, I mean," she said vaguely, not adding the fact that she was also enjoying the strange euphoria of combat adrenaline, yet she hadn't had to kill anyone. It was nice. "When do we start sparring in gym class?" she asked Mira, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed.

"Next week, actually," Mira said. She had her head tilted now and was studying Olivia like there was nothing else in the world, intensely, cautiously.

Olivia looked away casually, reminding herself to be careful. If anyone were to stumble across a piece of her hidden equipment, or notice her fighting techniques, or some other giveaway, it would be the person she lived with, and then her father would demand certain steps to be taken- for the threat to be eliminated. The knowledge was a bitter pill. She liked Mira, even if the girl was a little cool and distant; there was something very strong about her. Mira was controlled, everything about her stretching upwards toward the sun, and even when lying on the ground getting kicked, her actions seemed very deliberate. It inspired a sort of trust.

"So why'd you jump in there like that?" Mira asked at last, sounding genuinely curious.

Olivia crinkled the thin paper sheet of the bed between her fingers, thinking. "At first I wasn't going to. But then you said what, uh, what happened with your old meister and I knew you weren't guilty. You didn't deserve it." It was the truth. She relaxed a little, liking it; it was so nice to be able to simply _speak_.

Mira leaned back a little, though. "I wasn't guilty? It's not a courtroom- I mean-" She shook her head hard, frowning, and then her hairtie snapped and her dreadlocks tumbled down around her face. "Oh, damnit!" Mira with her hair loose was quite a sight. Suddenly she looked much closer to fifteen, younger, and impossibly, her eyes went even bluer.

More mysterious rattling sounds came from the closet, and several rolls of bandages came hurtling out to land unerringly on a chair, followed by a stethoscope and a rattling pill bottle. "Almost done!" Miss Yumi called. Something crashed loudly. Olivia could only eye the closet uneasily, taken aback by the contrast between the DWMA's chaotic, bubbly nurse and the cold professionalism of the sterile white laboratories was used to.

"Is she, uh, a good nurse?" Olivia whispered to Mira. If her roommate died from medical malpractice just when they were getting used to each other, it would be sad.

The other girl gave a wheezy almost-chuckle, flicking a dreadlock out of her face. "Surprisingly, yeah. She just gets these mood swings..."

"Oh." Olivia continued to regard the closet dubiously as something else smashed and another bottle of something shot out to join the pile of things on the chair.

"Really, though. Thank you. What you did, uh, it was very- it was nice. Thanks." Mira looked off somewhere over Olivia's head as she spoke, and for a moment, there was so much pain twisting her face that Olivia's breath caught.

"Uh, sure. No problem. Anytime. Well, I mean, not anytime, because you seriously can't let people treat you so disrespectfully, I mean, if you show weakness, uh, people will be mean, and-" She was rambling like an utter idiot. She swallowed hard and then said hopefully, trying for a little less insanity so she could wipe that heartbreaking look of shame off Mira's face, "Witches are strong. You couldn't have done anything, and anyway, weapons can't wield themselves. You saved yourself. Sometimes that's the only option left, you know, and it would have been an entirely failed mission if you'd died. At least now they have a report from you on the witch and things."

Mira narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, as if she were actually thinking hard about Olivia's words, then said, "How'd you know I was a weapon?"

"Uh, they said it in class," Olivia answered, blinking. "When they called your name in Combat Mathematics. Mira Nygus, demon knife."

"Oh." Before Mira could say anything else, Miss Yumi reappeared, brandishing a pair of scissors with a gleam in her eye.

"Shirt off, Nygus, please. I've got to look at your ribs." She picked up her stethoscope and waited expectantly, dark brows raised. Neither of them seemed inclined to tell Olivia to leave, and anyway, she assumed Mira would want- or rather, need- a helping hand back to the dormitory. Surely they wouldn't expect her to attend classes after such an astonishingly cruel thing had happened to her. So Olivia waited as Mira, leaning well away from Miss Yumi's scissors, tugged her shirt up over her head- but then she stopped, frozen, breath hissing between her teeth as her arms locked, the shirt caught around her face.

"Crap," she muttered.

"Here, let me," Miss Yumi said quietly, reaching, but Mira twitched away, even though she couldn't see the nurse around the shirt trapping her head.

Olivia frowned, wondering at the interaction. Then she realized- it would have been Miss Yumi who'd worked on Nygus when she came back, partnerless and defeated, because there was no doubt in Olivia's mind that Mira would have fought as long as she possibly could before fleeing, and she would certainly have been injured. Mira's eyes were too cold and her spine too stiff for her to have done anything else. Obviously Miss Yumi only reminded her, yet again, of the person she'd lost, and Olivia began to feel even worse for her roommate. Surely the entire school was full of such reminders. She thought of the laboratories, and the way her skin crawled whenever she saw a needle or smelled antispetic, and the way she hated going to Japan because there were too many handsome men in smart suits, looking just like her father.

"Want help?" she asked quietly.

Mira hesitated beneath her t-shirt, then turned vaguely in Olivia's direction. "Okay." Olivia hopped off the bed and helped maneuver Mira to freedom, attempting to be careful of her ribs. Mira wasn't bandaged under her shirt; she just sat there in a black sports bra, looking simultaneously irritated and dully tired, as Miss Yumi ran a hand over her already bruising ribs.

"Breathe in, deep," Miss Yumi ordered, sticking the stethoscope onto Mira's back. It was cold, judging by the way her eye twitched, but she did as asked. "All right." Miss Yumi tossed the stethoscope back into the closet without looking and crossed her arms, eyeing them both over her glasses. "You're all right, you'll just have to be careful. Take it easy for a few weeks. You're excused from gym, and I'll send some painkillers with you." Then she softened for a moment, returning to the kind woman who had shown Olivia into the Death Room her first day at the DWMA, and patted Mira on the shoulder. "Stop blaming yourself, Nygus, all right? Or at least pretend. Start trying to move on. We've all lost someone, here."

Mira stared ferociously at her shoes. "Okay," she said compliantly. It was entirely unconvincing.

They left the medical station, and luckily the school was in between classes; the halls weren't full of rushing students to bump into Mira, or even worse, point and stare. Olivia stayed quiet, thinking, trying to figure out how she felt about the morning's strange events. It was an odd, churning mix of satisfaction, nervousness, and wonderment. This school was so very, very different than she'd expected, and the people! They were all so blatantly emotional, so wild, with such freedom, but they were strong in spite of it. Cascadia would never, ever hire any of them, and Olivia could just picture Maria laughing till she cried at their terrible deceptions- it was as if none of them had ever told a lie before.

She was going to have to think more on all of this, to try and discern why she felt so _light_, but first, she had to figure out a way to get a job in the library and get herself down into the catacombs.

* * *

Jennifer was struggling with the tie to her uniform, tongue poking out the corner of her mouth as she attempted various knots, but she found a moment to ask Mira, "Are you coming to classes today?"

"No," was all Mira said. Her bed felt fantastic, warm and cozy, and the patch of sunlight coming in through the window would hit her perfectly in about an hour. Besides, she was still in far more pain than she really wanted to admit, even after taking the medication Miss Yumi had given her. Her face hurt, her ribs were absolutely killing her, pretty much everything else hurt, and anyway, she was drained, turned inside out and hollowed. The idea of marching through those halls again, of hearing the poison whispers in her ear, was too much. She missed Eimy deep down, and as much as she'd begun to recover, the far-away ache where their resonance had been for a year hadn't gone away yet.

"Uh, oh, okay." Jennifer finally managed some semblance of a proper knot and stuck her feet into her boots, standing with astonishingly perfect balance on one leg as she brought the other one up to her chest to tie her laces. Who on earth tied their shoes that way? "Won't the teachers get angry? I mean, you can't just _not go_ to something."

Mira chuckled. Jennifer spoke as if the teachers getting angry was the absolute end of the world as they knew it. Her face was even scrunched up in deeply genuine horror. "It'll be fine, they'll understand."

Jennifer appeared dubious, but she said, "Want me to bring you the homework?"

She was acting so normal, so absolutely, genuinely normal, entirely unaffected by the ridiculous beatdown of yesterday, and Mira couldn't figure it out. So she just watched, amused, as Jennifer stood there like a shy flamingo, halfway through knotting her laces, staring and waiting for an answer. "Sure. Thanks."

Jennifer smiled a little, that strange tremulous lip-wobble that she seemed to fall into naturally, and then darted out the door, black hair flying like a stormcloud behind her. Mira sighed as the room fell dead quiet, then pulled her blankets up over her head, poking a tiny tunnel next to her mouth so she could breathe.

Lying here, like this, drowsy and lethargic under the influence of the pain medicine, it was very peaceful. When she was a child, her mother had eventually given up trying to persuade her that monsters weren't real, and told her instead that they could never, ever get her if she were safe under her blankets.

She closed her eyes. Flashes of dark fire spun behind her eyelids, a cold yellow stare and the keening cries of a thousand black hawks with razor claws- the witch who'd killed Eimy wouldn't have stopped for a quilt, no matter how much love was woven into each stitch. Her mother had been right to stop pretending monsters didn't lurk in the shadows. Mira exhaled slowly, warming her blanket cocoon with her own breath, trying for the millionth time not to wonder what that hawk witch had done to Eimy's body.

Then the door creaked open. Mira burrowed partially out of her blankets and blinked at Jennifer, who was wearing that nervous, overly toothy smile-frown again.

Jennifer held out a tray. "Uh. I brought you breakfast. I just- um, I thought it might- I thought you might get hungry." She set it down on Mira's bedside table and then linked her hands behind her back as if she didn't know what to do with them, and the smell of hot toast and bacon lured Mira a little further out of her nest. She noticed absently that Jennifer smelled strongly like soap.

"Breakfast, huh," she said dryly. "You're awful nice. If I didn't know better I'd think you were buttering me up for something."

Jennifer's face went perfectly still, the fledgling smile slipping off her face. "Am I overdoing it?" she said anxiously.

"I- what?" Mira was lost.

"Being nice," Jennifer said, as if that explained everything perfectly. Her rather wide mouth was pressed thin.

Mira thought hard, snagging a slice of orange to munch on while she did so, because in the nine short days she'd known Jennifer Mason, it had already become clear that the girl had a very hard time getting her words out. It wasn't just the stuttering, or the way she covered her mouth all the time with her hands or her hair, speaking in stilted mumbles from behind her shields. She simply didn't seem to quite have a handle on everyday conversation. She talked too little, or too much, too fast or too slow- she talked like a child on a playground. "Oh. The shy thing. You're, what, trying to make friends?"

Jennifer actually blushed, pink spreading over her cheeks. "I guess," she muttered, rocking back on her heels and sticking her thumbs in the straps of her backpack.

Mira snorted in spite of herself. "We're friends. You kicked ass for me. Or, you were going to, whatever. That makes you a pretty cool person in my book. Plus, I automatically love anyone who brings me bacon, so there's that."

Jennifer blushed harder, mouth falling open, looking completely befuddled. "I- wh- I- really?"

"Don't faint on me." Mira sat up more fully and leaned over to take a gulp of coffee. "Thanks."

Jennifer's blush faded, but she didn't leave. She just tilted her head to the side and squinted at Mira thoughtfully. Mira raised a brow under the scrutiny, wondering what on earth was going through her roommate's mind. The girl really was strange. Yesterday, from her position on the floor while that scumbag Denny did his damnedest to cave in her ribs, all she'd been able to see of Jennifer had been her back and a small sliver of her face, but there had been no fear in her posture. She'd almost been glowing, really, and she'd been _ready _when Denny charged_, _fists up and weight balanced. Maybe she'd had combat training already somewhere. Finally Jennifer cleared her throat and said slowly, as if the question held great importance, "See you later?"

Mira flapped a hand and mumbled, "Yeah, sure," around an overlarge and delightfully crunchy piece of bacon. Jennifer's lips twitched before she took off. Once again, Mira was left alone, to eat her breakfast and watch the golden dust motes swirl through the sunlight as she pondered her roommate's many contradictions.

* * *

The classrooms of the Death Weapon Meister Academy were very pretty, with pale yellow walls, big green chalkboards, and plush padded seats that made staying awake deeply difficult, but they were so large that it took a while for all the students to file in the single door. Olivia skulked at the edges of the hallway, trying to be invisible, until the bottleneck thinned out, and then slunk in, craning her neck to spot an empty seat without actually looking up and accidentally meeting someone's gaze. She walked quickly to the first one she found, but she had to slide past several people who were already seated to reach it, apologizing and trying to smash herself as far out of their way as she could. When she finally reached the empty seat, she sank down with a gusty sigh of relief before pulling out her textbook. She tried not to look at the cover; it was an anatomical drawing of a man, skinned, muscles and tendons painted very white and very red. It was terrible, with bulging eyes that followed her no matter which way she turned, and it made her think of killing, which made her eyes burn.

Mr. Marquis arrived, with his standard flamboyant energy, wearing a chunky pink sweatervest that clashed sinfully with his orange hair. He looked rather like a pitbull in a tutu. The busy buzz of the class quieted instantly, though. No one was stupid or suicidal enough to disrespect Mr. Marquis. On her first day in this class, Olivia had heard someone whisper that when he and Miss Yumi took to the battlefield, their enemies called them 'the Orange Death' and, as dumb as the nickname was, it still made Olivia wary. She'd learned a long time ago that if a mercenary lived long enough to earn a nickname, it meant they were a lot better than she was.

Mr. Marquis started his lecture, sketching a circle on the board and leading the class through the layers of a soul, from outermost phosphoresence to the inner nucleus of carbon, protein chains, helium and oxygen. It was deeply uninteresting, and worse, it reeked of laboratory work- chemical bonds and polarity and the like. Olivia doodled a square in the corner of her notebook, then a heart, then a zigzag that trailed off into infinity. All the witches in the book Medea had given her had had interesting titles, but Olivia was still only Olivia. It was extremely stupid, and she knew it, but she closed her eyes and concentrated, very hard, on the core of static that lived in her chest beside her heartbeat. She felt nothing but a light breeze on her skin, but when she slanted a look sideways, the girl next to her was shivering.

Olivia smiled placidly into her notebook and drew a teardrop, then scribbled it out until it was nothing but a shiny black depression in the paper. She was getting closer to the event the book spoke of, when a witch's powers bloomed, and she could already picture the happy smile on her father's face. He would be so proud, so overjoyed that she'd become so strong, all on her own, he would praise her, and maybe he would even hug her-

Mr. Marquis had to roar her name three times before she blinked back to awareness, with an utterly blank, "Huh?"

He charged. Well, he walked towards her, but he did it with his usual overabundance of enthusiasm. "Mason! I asked you a question!"

Wincing, she straightened in her seat, uncomfortably aware of the snickering coming from the other students around her. "Uh... can you repeat it, please, sir?" she said quietly, looking down into her lap. Her face was probably red. She felt very small.

He pinched the bridge his nose and eyed her as if she'd just proposed burning down the school. "I suppose. I _asked_, what are usually the three physical symptoms that indicate the first stage of metamorphosis into a pre-kishin?"

"I- I- I-" She was hot and cold all at once, and her head had filled up with fuzz. Someone behind her laughed outright and she bent her head so her hair fell forward around her face, staring at her knees in horror. "I- uh-" She knew this, she did, or at least she thought she did, but suddenly her face was lumpy and foreign and her hands were gigantic, sitting there awkwardly on the desk in front of her. She was a melange of ill-fitted parts attached to a faulty brain, and her tongue was frozen solid. No wonder they all laughed.

Then, with astonishingly perfect timing, the door to the classroom flew open with a bang, and Mira strode in like someone going to war, chin up and shoulders back. She was in her uniform, crimson tie jauntily loose around her neck, and although she walked carefully up the stairs to Olivia's row of seats, there was no pain showing on her face. Instead she just barged past the other students and jerked a thumb at the boy sitting on one side of Olivia. "Scoot over," she ordered, apparently totally uncaring of the fact that the whole classroom was staring at her.

The boy opened his mouth as if to say something, but then snapped it shut and obediently moved over a seat. Mira slouched down beside Olivia with a yawn and managed to ignore Mr. Marquis' bulging eyes for a full ten seconds before saying, "Sorry I'm late, sir. I'll be on time from now on."

Olivia leaned a little away from her roommate and watched Mr. Marquis with bated breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion, but he just huffed like a dragon and shook his head. He almost looked pleased, even, giving Mira the tiniest of nods, as if she'd passed a secret test.

Then he looked at Olivia and she immediately deflated again. "Well? I asked you a question, Mason."

She opened her mouth and tried very hard to make a sound. Nothing came out but a breathy sort of squawk, and the boy Mira had just evicted from his chair chuckled. It hit Olivia like a spatter of acid. She put her hands over her face in desperation, shaking. She wanted Midori, she wanted the familiar scents of bleach and steel, and she wanted to know what in the hell she was supposed to be doing.

Then Mira's warm hands were tugging her arms down. "You got it. Take a breath."

Breathe? Olivia was fairly certain she'd forgotten how, but after a second, wonder of wonders, she managed it, a shuddering croaking gasp. She concentrated on the rasp of Mira's bandaged palms against her skin and let the other students fade away. She'd read the assigned chapter, hadn't she? And her tutors at Cascadia had worked on her memory for years, drilling her with endless recall exercises. She glanced up at Mr. Marquis and said, voice thin and reedy, "Teeth. The teeth sharpen."

"Very good," he said warmly. "And?"

She took another breath. "And- the bones become denser. And, uh, and the cellular regeneration rate... speeds up?"

Mr. Marquis' smile was ridiculously, blindingly white. "Which leads to what?"

"Uh- various deformities and... and, um, physical mutations." She discovered that she had a white-knuckle grip on Mira's wrist and released it abruptly.

"Hmm. You're almost right. Generally the first symptom is a change in blood color, and the composition of the marrow is affected along with bone density, but good try. Read the chapter again." He blazed a second more of smile at her and then, blessedly, shifted his attention to someone else. Olivia didn't listen; she was still working on inhaling.

"Attagirl," Mira whispered. She didn't seem perturbed that Olivia had latched onto her so hard.

"Thank you," Olivia said shakily. She was so, so glad that she wasn't wired up for Midori and Nova to listen in. Nova would have laughed, too, just like the students all around her, and Midori would not have been proud of her.

"Sure."

"You came to class. I- I thought you weren't going to?" Olivia began to copy down the notes written on the blackboard, pencil slipping in her sweaty palm. She would study hard tonight, she resolved, biting the inside of her cheek. There was no way she'd go through the torture she'd just experienced ever again.

"Yeah. Decided I'd better quit moping, you know? I guess I saw something good in all the bad," Mira said casually, pulling out her own notebook. When Olivia glanced at her, she smiled a little, and despite her still-pounding heart, Olivia found herself smiling back.


	6. Chapter 6

"You're always in the library. Like, all the time! You basically live there!" Mira reached out and swiped an apple slice from Olivia's tray, sticking the entire thing in her mouth with a look of bliss.

Olivia said, "So?"

"So! So if you don't take a break from studying every now and then you'll never find a weapon." Mira swallowed and fixed Olivia with an extra-piercing stare.

It was an obvious distraction attempt; Olivia didn't miss the hand snaking across the table toward her BLT. She grabbed it up and took a bite, much to Mira's disappointment. "I can just get assigned one," she pointed out, trying not to spray precious, tasty crumbs.

"Yeah," Mira said, drawing the word out to the point of ridiculousness. She stabbed a meatball with unnecessary vigor, but didn't eat it.

"Whassamatter?" Olivia mumbled, mouth full of another bite of sandwich. Rich bacony goodness flooded her mouth and she only just stopped herself from shutting her eyes in bliss. She'd probably gained weight, sitting around all day in class and eating all the delicious foods she'd been forbidden in Cascadia, but it was well worth it, even after how hard she'd worked on her cardio over the past year. She wondered absently how Midori and Nova were faring; last time she'd checked in, Midori had sounded remarkably ill-tempered, and during her entire report, she'd heard Nova yammering on and on about claustrophobia and boredom and hating life in the background.

"Don't choke, piglet. And nothing. I was just pointing it out. We're almost a month into the term. The deadline's coming up for applications." She gave up on the meatball in favor of snatching another of Olivia's apple slices.

"Thief!" Olivia protested, trying halfheartedly to grab it back.

Mira leaned deftly out of the way. "You always take fruit but you never eat it! Don't complain!"

"I do not."

"You do and you know it," Mira snapped, with such vitriol that the skinny blond boy sitting closest to her blinked and leaned away, protectively edging his own tray of food a little away.

Olivia frowned a little, taken aback at her roommate's irritated tone. "It's just- I mean, um, I know fruit's good for you. It's just too sweet for me, usually," she tried to explain. Her voice creaked like a rusty hinge and she started gnawing on the inside of her lower lip, wondering miserably why Mira even put up with someone as gawky and uncool as her.

Mira sighed and prodded her meatball again, slouching over to prop her face on one hand. "Yeah, so you've said."

There was definitely something wrong with her. Olivia reached across the table and tapped the back of Mira's hand. "What is it?"

Mira squinted at her for a long moment, then shoved a gigantic forkful of spaghetti into her mouth, raising her eyebrows challengingly.

Olivia narrowed her eyes at Mira. Evasion through food; that was unfair. "You're mad about something, because you eat like a starving goat when you're mad," she thought out loud, pretending she didn't hear Mira sputtering around her huge mouthful. The little blond boy cringed and started eating rapidly, apparently trying to eat all his food before the raging monster next to him could snatch it up. "And that's the third time today you've reminded me of the, uh, the deadline thingy."

"Sshho?" Mira said, chewing diligently.

Olivia ran through her memory, then- "You haven't turned in a partner application either," she pointed out.

Mira swallowed with a grunt, took a sip of water, then resumed stabbing her meatball wordlessly. Olivia had to grab the tray and slide it out of her reach before Mira said quietly, "So then neither of us has a partner yet, right?"

"I guess not," Olivia said, deeply bewildered. Mira frowned hard, bandages crinkling across her forehead, so Olivia settled the rest of her apple on the tray before giving it back.

It was a useless gesture. "Yeah. Guess not," Mira said abruptly, standing up so fast she almost fell over. She grabbed her water and marched off, looking like something heavy had been laid on her shoulders.

Olivia goggled at her retreating back for a moment, wondering if, as Nova often said, all women were crazy, or if it was only Mira, then abandoned her half-eaten food to chase after, ignoring the blond boy's obvious sigh of relief. She caught up right as Mira exited the cafeteria. "Are you mad at me?" she said, upset, aware that her voice was shaking a little, but not bothering to try to stop it. She waited as Mira slowed to a stop, expecting to be left friendless all over again, heart drumming in sick apprehension. Without Mira, this school would be full of eyes and laughter and pointing fingers and mocking voices. It would be unbearable, and Midori's voice would be the only ray of light left.

"No, I'm not mad," Mira said after a little while, still looking stormy. Then she yanked angrily on the end of her necktie and burst out, "It's just I didn't think you of all people blamed me for Eimy!"

"Blamed you? What are you talking about?"

Mira looked at her sharply. Students churned around them like a river around stones, loud and happy, but all Olivia could hear was her own heartbeat. "Isn't that why you don't want to partner with me?" Mira said sourly. "We spar together every day in gym, we've practiced resonating, we hang out all the time, but you don't want to be my meister."

Olivia closed her eyes for a moment, trying to process, then cracked them. "It, uh, it didn't occur to me that you would want that," she admitted, swallowing. Her stomach hurt. She'd hurt her first friend ever, she'd been ignorant and silly and blind, and it was an awful feeling. She started gnawing on her thumbnail, eyes down.

Astonishingly, Mira started to giggle, then had to lean against the hallway wall for support as her laughter evolved into full-blown guffaws. "We're both a bit stupid, then," she said when she recovered. "Course I do. We get along, we fight well together, resonance is going well-"

"It is?" It had taken them half an hour just to make a connection at all when they started out, and it was always fizzy and weak. Half the time, they couldn't get it at all, not even the tiniest brush of consciousness; it was discouraging to say the least.

"No, trust me, our souls harmonize," Mira said, with the authority of one who'd already gone through all these things once. Maybe that was why she seemed so reliable to Olivia. "Took me and Eimy a long time too, it doesn't mean we can't. We just have to figure out how."

"Oh." Well, that was pleasing news, and Mira's obvious good mood was the icing on the cake. Olivia felt herself swelling up a little.

"So I guess we'll be turning in partner requests?" Mira said, lips twitching.

"Yes!" Olivia felt almost like dancing. She flicked the golden skull grinning at her from the base of the nearest lamp just as the bell rang. They fell into step together, boots thunking against the gray tiles in time, Mira a little ahead of Olivia, throwing elbows fearlessly as they worked their way through the chattering crowds of students thronging the halls.

"So what's up with the library, huh?" Mira said absently as she fumbled through her locker. A massive book fell out; Olivia grabbed it just before it landed on Mira's toes, concentrating on hiding her discomfort with the question by pasting on Maria's stone-cold poker face. The truth was, she was slowly wriggling her way into Miss Yumi's confidences- Miss Yumi was the librarian, too, she'd discovered. The woman was involved in every single corner of the school, it seemed, and she was more than happy to use Olivia to fetch and carry and file when such services were offered. Olivia hadn't yet worked up the nerve to ask for access to the restricted back rooms, fearing that such an odd and unfounded request would stick too well in Miss Yumi's memory, but now when she walked into the library, there would be a cart full of books to be put away, and always on top, a volume that would help with whatever homework she was working on this week.

She wanted, desperately, to talk to Midori just then, to hear him speaking warm wisdom into her ear, but she wasn't due to check in with him for another few days. When she didn't say anything, Mira peered at her around the battered purple door of her locker, brows furrowing delicately.

"I'm doing research," Olivia said at last, slowly, ignoring the screaming little voice in the back of her mind that told her she was crossing a very dangerous line. "On witches." Hadn't Maria always said to lie with the truth, after all? Wasn't honestly the best policy, or something? She shook her head, aghast at the diretion of her own thoughts; there was no place for sharing secrets between friends when one of them was a dirty, deceptive, double-crossing spy. Suddenly it occurred to her how devastated Mira would be if they partnered up and then one day, months down the line, Olivia defected with an armload of Academy secrets. Her boiling stomach lurched again.

Mira started so hard that she smacked her temple into locker door. "Why?" she hissed, yanking on her tie again.

Olivia bit her lip, panicked, hated herself for a brief yet passionate moment, then drew on her father's smooth assurance and said calmly, "I want to know what we'll be fighting. I don't want anything bad to happen to you again." She was scum. She was the worst sort of person, and it would have been less disgusting to simply slide a blade between Mira's ribs. As soon as the words left Olivia's lips, as soon as Mira's eyes went star-bright and wet, the self-hatred snowballed. Olivia was a manipulater, a shameless puppetmaster without a heart. Even knowing that her father would very much approve didn't soothe the loathing.

Mira's glowing face did, though, a little, even as it pained Olivia. "You're doing all that work and studying- for us?" she breathed. Olivia could only nod, feeling ill. Mira smiled like sunshine, but Olivia felt cold.

* * *

She counted down the hours to her next report to Midori, and the days were endless. Mira was snoozing on her bed, entirely buried under the covers, and as Olivia clicked the lock to the bathroom, assembled her transmitter, and turned on the shower, she was a little surprised to find her eyes were stinging.

"Blacktail, reporting in," she whispered tightly, tilting her head back in a vain attempt to stem the burgeoning tears. If her father were to know what she'd done, the lie she'd planted in Mira's soul, he would be so very pleased, but would his pleasure even reach her anymore, after being gained at such cost? She thought sadly that blue eyes showed the most.

"Heya, kiddo," came Midori's gravelly voice. She grinned at the empty air, and then the tears overflowed for real.

"Hi," she croaked, sniffling.

"What's wrong, girlie? You okay?" He sounded worried. "You need help?"

"No, no, um, it's just..." she trailed off, sinking down to the floor and pressing her back against the grey marble vanity, staring at the leering, skull-shaped doorknob. Mira had left a roll of bandages draped over the towel rack. Olivia reached out and took the end of the linen between her fingertips, trying to decide where to start. "This is harder than I thought it would be," she said finally, wiping at her eyes.

Midori said contemplatively, "Weaving a tangled web, huh? First time I was undercover I got married, of all the dumbass things to do. Spent three years in Scotland workin', running guns, and I tell you what, when I left I wasn't only crying over my family. I made some brothers there and I still miss them."

"Oh," Olivia said, splintering on the inside in a very un-witchy way. She reached for the staticky sizzle in her chest and willed the humid bathroom air into motion over her face, drying her tears. The accomplishment didn't make her feel as good as she would have liked. What good was being a witch when all she could do was raise a little breeze and make a few ripples in puddles?

"It gets heavy, seeing that the other side's just regular people too. Lines get blurry. I get it." Midori hummed a little, gently, then said, "So how goes the library thing?"

She sighed, sitting up a little straighter. "Um, okay. The librarian's beginning to look to me to file things, but I haven't gotten into the back room yet. She goes into the catacombs at least every other day, though, and she doesn't bring a keycard or anything like that with her, so I don't think the security is all that tight. I'm thinking about just sneaking down there."

"Don't," Midori said immediately. "Don't risk it. Nova's heading back to Clan headquarters tomorrow for a while, and I don't want you getting into trouble without both of us ready to pull you out. Cascadia sent over a new report on the Academy's architecture and you're right, I'd bet a leg that whatever we want is down in those tunnels."

"You think I'm that bad at sneaking?" she muttered dolefully, only half joking. "What's Nova going back for?" There was only silence. "Oh. Star Clan business. Uh, sorry." Her eyes were burning. She stretched out a hand to the shower spray and wiped wet fingers across her eyelids. The smooth, unblemished skin of her inner elbow caught her eye; such a strange thing, foreign, like she was looking at someone else's arms. The wonders of Cascadia technology had ensured she had no suspicious scarring that could imperil this mission, painfully, and after living for so many years with the marks she'd been excited when her father finally bothered to order them lasered away, but now it only made her deeply, darkly angry.

"No reason you shouldn't get to know us a little," Midori said.

He was trusting her; that was probably very foolish, because nameless Olivia of Cascadia apparently had no problem using other people in the cruelest ways. She blinked at the shining sheen of water on her index finger, trying to will it to move. It formed a tiny bubble, magnifying the whorls of her fingerprint, but that was all, and she let her head fall back against the vanity, discouraged on a level she'd never known before. "You don't have to share your secrets with me."

"Don't sulk, it's ugly. He's going back because there was a betrayal, and Nova's our best tracker, believe it or not."

"He's- he's going to hunt someone down? One of your own?"

"Ye-eesss, that's right," Midori drawled, sounding very interested in what she would say. "No one betrays family."

She shuddered suddenly, imagining Nova materializing out of the shadows like a ghost, teeth bared, a hunting dog on the scent of blood. He would love a thing like that, chasing, being the predator; he was made for it, from his innate animal cunning to his outlandish speed and his surreal knack for charming information out of people. Yet Midori loved him, in spite of it all; she saw it in every wrinkle and sigh and curse. It appeared her time at the Academy was lending a new layer to all her old acquaintances, at least, as she became more familiar with truly knowing other people. "Time's short," she said, almost noiselessly, into the transmitter. "I'll keep working on getting into the catacombs. I'm checking out a building, uh, on the east side of campus tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it's just a garage or something, the lock on it's a cheap one. Tell Mr. Deering I've got intelligence on many living witches, though, including last-known locations. I'll check in again in three days." She'd been piecing together facts gradually, pausing at the perfect time outside teacher's offices to tie her shoes, sitting with a book she wasn't reading outside a vent that carried sound up conveniently from the first floor staff conference room, and though most of what she heard was nonsense, there was enough talk about missions for the upperclassmen that she'd garnered a respectable sheaf of papers for her father. She could go for a walk around the city tomorrow, get coffee or something, blending in perfectly in her uniform, and it would be very simple to slide the encoded papers into the specific crack in the wall of a certain abandoned building that was their drop-off and pick-up point.

"Okay, girlie," Midori said, accent growing and blurring the words. She had a funny feeling he was remembering something. "Good luck. Try and enjoy it while you can, yeah?"

"Uh, yeah," she lied before clicking off the transmitter. She disassembled it quickly, tucked all the assorted pieces away in their hiding spots, and stripped quickly before edging under the hot water of the shower. It felt like heaven, but she couldn't stay long; she'd already spent a while in the bathroom. So she shampooed her hair and soaped her body at lightspeed, skipped conditioner entirely, pulled on her pajamas, and forced herself back out into the colder air of the dorm with a wince. It was quickly turning fall outside, but the school's heaters languished dusty and unused as of yet, and her fingers and toes were icicles as she slid under her covers, yanking them over her head, Mira style. Even in all her missions to the northern latitudes, she could never remember feeling so cold, not in all her life. Maybe her black evil heart was spreading frost to the rest of her.

She curled into the tightest ball she could manage, knees jammed against her chest, but the chill inside wouldn't go away, no matter how toasty her body got. After a while, drifting on the edge of sleep, she heard Mira get up and walk toward the bathroom. The footsteps slowed by the edge of Olivia's bed, then a moment later, a warm weight settled over her.

She waited until the door to the bathroom closed before popping her head out of the covers. Mira's favorite blanket, her soft, cream-colored knitted one, obviously homemade, was tucked gently over Olivia.

* * *

For all her angular, intimidating beauty, Professor Luma's voice was very soothing, like warm butter. It was almost unfair for a woman to have such a voice, Olivia thought, shifting her weight slightly as her hipbones complained from such lengthy inactivity. Behind her, someone coughed, and she caught a few sighs of exasperation, but overall, the room was very quiet. "Good job, good job," Luma said melodically, moving through the sitting, paired-off students. "Relax, Dawson. Garcia, if you keep pushing like that you'll never get it, let it come to you." She meandered through the rows of cross-legged weapons and meisters, leaning over to tap a shoulder here and adjust a spine there.

Olivia and Mira both cracked their eyes at the same time to smirk at each other, then shut them when Professor Luma walked up to them as they sat, cross-legged, facing each other. Mira squeezed Olivia's hands quickly, and Olivia squeezed back, nervous excitement making her grin, and then they _reached_ for each other, groping through nothingness until, with a sensation like a key turning in a lock, their souls connected.

For just a moment, Olivia went as limp and pleased as a cat in a puddle of sunshine. Mira's soul felt so good, so encompassingly nice, a concrete anchor in a wayward world. But then something deep inside her _twisted _and, with a mutual shiver, their bond snapped.

Beside them, Professor Luma's footsteps stopped, and they both opened their eyes to look at her, hands still linked between them- physical contact seemed to make it easier, though that hadn't helped them much in the long run. The professor was blinking down at them with raised brows, a finger dimpling her plum-painted lower lip. Olivia had no idea how Luma knew whether or not her students were resonating successfully, but the woman always did, unerringly; it must be one of those vaguely creepy talents that all the teachers seemed to have. "Don't take this the wrong way, because there's only room for improvement, but you two haven't progressed at all," she said after a beat. Olivia slumped, tucking her chin against her chest. "Will you wait here? I'd like to try something."

"Sure," Mira drawled, all her teeth showing. "We can do this all day." Her sarcasm was clear, but her hands were firm in Olivia's, no anger or impatience in them.

Olivia sighed, but she nodded too, and Professor Luma stepped out into the hallway.

"I wonder what she's doing?" Mira said conspirationally, leaning forward, like she wasn't bothered at all.

Olivia got stuck in the laser-blue of her eyes for a moment, then said, "I have no idea." In her head, they managed to touch again, for just an instant, soothing and burning at the same time before it shattered. She'd never known, before, how bitterly alone she really was. How could she ever even dream of leaving this behind? She could run, she could take Mira with her and hunker down somewhere, hire out as a mercenary, or maybe she could confess everything to Lord Death, ask his protection, and she could stay here to burn away all the memories of bloodletting and sniper shots and needles. Of course, he'd probably reap her on the spot if she told him she was a witch, and what would Mira do, to learn that her new partner was really her most hated enemy? Olivia's carefully controlled breath stuttered in something like agony.

It must have come through on her face, because Mira tugged a little on one of Olivia's hands, forehead furrowing beneath her bandages, but before she could say anything, Professor Luma reentered the classroom, holding the hand of a younger boy sporting the grayish hair of a very old man. For a split second, the paleness of it brought Nova to mind, and Olivia squirmed. Someone trying to save her life had turned out to be a weightier burden than she would have ever imagined, and thinking of Nova always made her anxious and wound up.

The boy had glasses on, and very heavy boots; he walked with the air of someone much older, even though he held onto Luma's hand. Olivia tried to guess his age and couldn't decide at all between eight and twelve. Luma led him up to the girls and then dropped his hand like it was on fire.

"Frank, I'd like you to look at their souls for me, if you would, please," she said, pleasantly enough, but she watched him every second from her peripheral vision.

He turned eyes the color of swamp water onto Olivia. She tensed automatically, discomfort zigzagging up her spine. This boy wasn't right, and the way his stare lingered on her jugular only reinforced the impression. He looked like he wanted to flay her open and then dance on her grave. Mira squeezed her hand again; she felt it too.

"All right, then," he said calmly. His gaze shifted to a middle-distance focus even as he stared at them for a long minute. Each second, Olivia felt more frost creep into her bloodstream. Finally he looked away, back to Professor Luma, who was twirling the end of one of her chestnut pigtails, doing a very good impression of nonchalance. "She-" He pointed at Mira, who scowled horribly, bandages sliding down her nose a little. "She's cracked down the middle, but it's healing. She's a very tightly bound soul, without much mercy, but with a lot of strength. Very red in color, indicating a violent streak. Whatever cracked her must have been quite... strong."

Professor Luma hissed a breath between her teeth, shooting Mira an apologetic glance; the entire classroom had abandoned their meditation attempts now and were leaning close to listen. "Frank here has the unique ability to perceive souls visually," she said to everyone. "Since Nygus and Mason here are experiencing a little difficulty in resonating properly, and he's visiting the campus, I thought it would be a good demonstration for you to see how two souls can properly compliment each other." She waved a hand. "Go on. Jennifer's soul, please."

He turned those murky eyes back on Olivia. She had to hold tight to Mira's hands to do it, but she met his gaze without flinching. His head tilted. "Her soul... it's different," he breathed, very low, and even as Luma asked him to please repeat himself, Olivia froze in terrified realization. What if he could tell she was part witch, just by looking at her soul? What if it was wearing a pointy hat and waving a wand or something? She'd never even heard of such an ability as seeing souls, but if he could do it, surely the Lord of Death could too, which meant her cover had been blown from day one and they were simply waiting for her to make a mistake, for the opportune time to strike and take her out. Her hands were shaking wildly in Mira's. There was a window in the classroom, she could jump if push came to shove, but she didn't have her transmitter on her, there would be no way to contact Midori for an evacuation, and she hadn't yet learned all the ways in and out of Death City. She could run out the door, but there were staff members around every corner, not to mention Lord Death himself three floors down. She'd never make it to safety. She'd have to stand and fight, and- what? Kill them all and then try to escape?

It was hopeless. She shut her eyes and waited.

Frank said, "Her soul is very small and dense. Dark blue, nearly black, which is interesting... It's a little sad, a little confused." Something cruel entered his tone, something vicious. "She has a lot of power, more than I've ever seen."

Olivia released the breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding, eyes snapping open to stare at Frank, who gave her a twisted smirk before adding, "These girls can't resonate because there is a secret between them. For whatever reason, their souls can't bear to sink into resonance. It's too vulnerable." His smile grew wider, toothier. "They're afraid." Several students let out low, impressed-sounding gasps; someone over in the corner with yellow hair actually toppled over with a sort of gurgle. It was all very dramatic, and the interested sort of way everyone was craning their necks to stare made Olivia deeply uncomfortable, though Mira didn't seem bothered.

"There, you see?" Luma clapped her hands and turned back to the rest of the class. "Trust is one of the most vital things in a partnership. It'll save your life in the field, trust me, you can't fight without it. Thank you, Frank, you may go now. Your father's still with Lord Death, I believe."

"You're quite welcome, Professor" he said silkily, turning on his heel to leave. As he slipped out the door, his eyes met Olivia's once more, so malevolent and hungry that she jumped.

He knew, maybe not all of it, but something, and a promise that neither of them understood fully, but which was no less deadly for the lack of it, passed between them in that split-second glance. She smiled weakly in response to Mira's searching stare and resolved inwardly to watch out for the grey-haired boy.

* * *

White Star walked back into his room with huge relief, and when he flopped down on his own bed, it was so sweet that he never, ever wanted to leave again. He kicked his boots off and smooshed his face into the pillow, shoving his luggage off the bed onto the floor, the better to stretch out. It smelled like home, like metal and sweat and ash, a strong smell. He loved it. God, he hated that dank dungeon he'd been stuck in for over a fucking _month_, watching over Blacktail- there wasn't a damn thing to do except sleep and train and annoy Midori, which, while fun, could also get dangerous.

Someone rapped on his door. He debated for a long moment before getting up and dragging himself over to open it- after all, if it was his brother, ignoring the knock would have horrible consequences. To his irritation, it wasn't; he'd gotten up for nothing. Jaune crossed her arms and stared up at him forbiddingly, dark eyes overbright beneath the shadow of the purple scarf tied around her head.

"You're drunk," he stated immediately. Even if she hadn't been swaying, such an accusation always had at least a fifty-fifty chance of being right when aimed at Jaune.

"I am not. I am hungry. You've been gone for a month and Seven won't cook for me!" She stomped her tiny foot to illustrate her point.

White Star snorted. "You're buzzed, then, and Grey Star will kick your ass up and down the mountain if he catches you again." She only glowered up at him, tilting sideways a little. He reached out, yanked on the dangling end of her scarf, then skipped deftly out of the way of her payback swipe and through the doorway, heading off to the kitchen. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't hungry. Airplane food was useless cardboard and, as far as he was concerned, should be banished to the deepest levels of hell. The trip from Death City to Japan had been far too long and his stomach was rumbling assertively.

Jaune dogged his heels, salivating. "What are you gonna make?"

"Food," he shot back. "Why won't Seven cook for you?"

She growled and scuffed a bare foot along the floor. They reached the kitchen and she disappeared into the fridge for a moment, coming back out with cheeks stuffed like a squirrel. "I spiffed soda onnis keyburd," she said through her mouthful.

White Star shook his head at her, nudging her away from the fridge and peering inside. "I'm genuinely surprised you're still alive. You know how much he babies his computers. Did he have a funeral for it?" He'd have to go hunt down Seven and give him his condolences.

She swallowed loudly, then said, "He won't admit it, but yeah, I'm pretty sure. What are you making?"

"Hmm. Chazuke?"

She clapped her hands. A small dagger fell out of her sleeve and clattered on the floor. "Oops," she said unrepentantly.

White Star caught it up on his foot and flipped it into his hand. "You need to sharpen this," he said after a moment's examination.

"Good catch, little brother." The voice from behind them was as smoothly treacherous as black ice.

Jaune and White Star both jumped, and she snagged her knife out of his hand and scampered for the doorway in an instant. "ByegoodluckI'lleatlater," she called, all in one breath, before disappearing. White Star was horribly envious.

Grey Star folded his arms and stared from the other doorway. White Star tried desperately not to fidget. "Got paid," he blurted finally, attempting not to notice that Grey Star's fists were wrapped for a fight.

"Give it to Bob," Grey Star said immediately. The awkward silence covered them again.

"Mission's going well," White Star tried again, wincing as his voice cracked. "The Cascadia operative infiltrated successfully, and-"

"Ah. The witch," Grey Star cut in, managing to fill up the room with thick choking terror, though he didn't move beyond arching an eyebrow.

White Star hyperventilated slightly, becoming vibrantly aware of the cutting knife sitting on the kitchen island. Everything in the room was suddenly aimed at his heart. "The what?" he croaked.

"The _witch_." Grey Star's green eyes narrowed.

"The witch..." This was going to require some serious bluffing. White Star took a deep breath before sticking his head in the fridge, leaving his unprotected back to his older brother in an entirely false show of trust. "Oh, you mean Blacktail. Olivia. She's just a halfbreed. She's got no powers. I looked into that a long time ago." He pulled out an apple and crunched into it, shutting the fridge and turning to face Grey Star. "You told me not to bother you with useless things anymore. So I didn't."

Grey Star smiled, then, and White Star dropped the apple and dove for the doorway Jaune had just escaped through. It was useless. Grey Star was on him in an instant, twisting his arms behind his back until his tendons went white-hot with strain, plates rattling as he hit the cupboards. "Little brother. You think you can lie to me? To my face?"

"It's not a lie, she's not a fucking witch, I did my research like I should have and her powers are useless-" White Star screamed, thrashing and kicking, heart hammering against his ribs. This was bad, this was very, very bad. What a fool he was to walk around unarmed.

Grey Star held him off easily. "I know exactly what you did and who you talked to. So foolish, to think you could bargain for information, in _my_ city."

"There was no information!" White Star bellowed, managing to land a kick to his brother's leg. It had no effect.

Grey Star shifted, snaking an arm around White Star's neck in a chokehold and smashing him up against the kitchen wall with the full weight of his bulky body. "I don't care if there was or wasn't. A witch, little brother- that's a tool the likes of which kings pray for, and you let her slip through our grasp, after Midori goes through all that work, spends all that time making her trust him?"

White Star squirmed, sputtering, starry flashes of black and white spinning in front of his eyes. "Midori-?" he managed, dumbstruck. There was no way. The older ninja's concern and liking for Blacktail had been far too real. No one could act that well for so long, and least of all Midori, with his outdated moral code.

"Indeed," Grey Star said smoothly, wedging a leg between White Star's and stomping viciously on his tender instep. White Star gave a muffled squeal into the wall, blind with pain, surging futilely against the iron grip slowly cutting off his air. "He's done well. Unlike you. You're getting too old for me to baby you any longer, brother. Don't keep secrets from me again. I don't enjoy having to hurt you, but you do persist in lying to the Clan, and that means I have no choice."

White Star made a noise, something intended to be a curse, or perhaps a plea, or maybe an apology, but it came out as a gasping moan as something pricked his neck, and then the stars grew bigger and brighter until he could see nothing else but stinging white.

* * *

"Hey. Hey, wake up. Jennifer?"

Olivia grunted, rolling over. "No," she said nonsensically, protesting everything about the morning in one word. She had a paper due today, two pages for Professor Luma on the most common problems during resonance, and she already knew that it was terrible. She could just see the giant, curly red 'F' Luma would stamp on the top.

"But breakfast," Mira said nonchalantly, and then the smell of food lured Olivia to a slightly more upright position.

"Wha? You got me food?" she said with a jaw-cracking yawn, scrubbing her eyes.

"I did," Mira said in clear amusement. "Well, sort of. I got you pancakes. But they look good."

Olivia slithered out a little further from beneath her blankets. Something very soft met her fingers. "You- your blanket again?" she said, pleased and embarassed at once.

Mira shrugged. "You're always curled up like you're dying." Her voice was nonchalant, but her hands were unbandaged, and Olivia couldn't tear her eyes away from the strong, calloused fingers holding the plate of syrup-drenched pancakes.

"It's cold, I guess," she lied absently, leaning forward to take a deep whiff.

Mira grinned. "Eat up, then, maybe the calories will make you suck less in gym," she teased, waving the plate.

Olivia scowled, but she sat up and took the pancakes anyway. "I don't suck," she muttered, scraping some of the syrup off the top with the side of her fork.

"I'm kidding, god," Mira said, flopping down on Olivia's bed, dreadlocks flying about in a wonderfully mad way. "You always come through in a pinch."

"Got Denny in the face last week during dodgeball," Olivia said in satisfaction. Generally she tried carefully to be average in any physical competition, but that little weasel had been wide open, and the temptation to nail him directly in the jaw had been too much for her to resist. He'd spun around and gone down with a deeply satisfying squeal.

"Yeah you did, I saw that," Mira laughed. She laid back over Olivia's blanket-swathed legs, staring up at the ceiling with a little smile on her lips; Olivia stuffed pancake into her mouth so she wouldn't say something stupid and embarassing, as she seemed to do the majority of the time at this school.

"Why do they have us play games?" she asked eventually, once she'd gone over the question a few times in her head, nibbling on the tines of her fork thoughtfully.

Mira eyed her unblinkingly, looking rather intent, then glanced away and said haltingly, "Uh. Well. Dodgeball trains the reflexes, you know, and aim, and peripheral vision."

"So when they have us do yoga it's for flexibility, then?" Olivia surmised. It was so serendipitous that she'd been roomed with somebody who'd already gone through all these classes and experiences; it was probably the only reason she wasn't totally failing everything but gym. Writing an essay or working through endless sheets of math problems was anathema to her, and her hand never itched for a gun more than when she was caged up in a desk. She forked a bite of pancake and held it out to Mira, who stared at it for a good five seconds before sitting up on her elbows to bite it.

"Mmhmm," Mira answered, once she'd swallowed. "Improves our chances of not getting our guts ripped out."

Olivia chortled, only aware of how incorrect her response was when Mira's eyes widened. "Oh," Olivia said, trying to formulate her face into something more appropriate. "That makes sense."

"Resonate?" Mira said suddenly, leaning forward a little, placing an arm on the side of Olivia's legs.

She sounded very somber, as if the question were life and death, so Olivia set aside her plate and said, "Sure."

They reached. It felt like groping through fog to Olivia, or knowing she should be running but unable to, in the funny quicksand way of dreams. Then Mira growled, shut her eyes and smashed her forehead against Olivia's, bandages scraping roughly, and shoved so hard that Olivia felt a quick rolling vertigo sweep over her.

"Ow," she protested as her soul got prodded, but Mira bullied her way in before she could do anything else, and then they were resonating like they'd never done before, and Olivia was no longer her own person, she was two, a double soul crammed to bursting in one aching skull. "Ow," she repeated, blinking into Mira's face, still a bare inch from her own.

"No ow," Mira said fiercely, going cross-eyed in an effort to stare at Olivia without retreating. "No ow! We've finally got it! Just don't let go, okay?"

"Okay," Olivia said dumbly, wondering with an internal wince if she had morning breath. Mira's breath smelled like toothpaste, pepperminty and fresh. Olivia held on, shutting her eyes tight and pushing her forehead harder against Mira's, begging her own contrary soul to cooperate, just this once, to ignore all the bad things she was doing to her so-called partner merely by existing.

"It's working," Mira breathed, lips brushing Olivia's cheek, relaxing a little.

"Um," Olivia managed, concentrating harder than she had since her first assassination. It was making her head hurt.

"Okay. Don't let go," Mira ordered, leaning back a little, brow wrinkled intensely.

That was easier said than done. As soon as Olivia told herself _not_ to think about her lies, they galloped to the forefront of her brain and stayed there, looming large and dark, despite all her frantic efforts, and then the resonance wobbled, Mira's pushy presence fraying away. "No!" Olivia yelped, but it was too late. The bond was gone.

"It's okay," Mira said softly, though she looked away.

"Maybe you should, uh, find another meister," Olivia said creakily, throat tight. Her father had always said it was a sin to waste talent or opportunity, and Mira had both.

"No." Mira shoot her head. Her dreadlocks were tied up in a thick sky-blue ribbon today, and Olivia's chest clenched as she looked at it, tied in such a pretty little bow. "We'll get it. I know we can be good, I can feel it. My mother didn't raise me to ignore what my gut's telling me and it's telling me to tell you we can be good!"

Olivia blinked, took a moment to work that sentence out, then said bleakly, "I've never even seen you transform, Mira, we haven't been able to resonate for more than, what, um, five minutes? You're going to fail again if you don't find someone better!" To her horror, her voice cracked a little, giving away the stinging tears starting up in her eyes. If Mira left her- it was too bad to think about, and yet she was planning to do the very same thing, to abandon her partner.

Mira scowled terribly and crossed her arms. "You just need to get over whatever your damn block is, okay?" Implied in her chill eyes was the question: what, exactly, had fucked innocent Jennifer Mason up so badly, if even the demon knife who'd watched her last partner ripped up could resonate better?

"_My_ block?" Olivia squealed, tears drying in the face of such an accustion. She ignored the fact that it was entirely true in favor of comforting, righteous indignation. Her head knew that she was in the wrong, but her heart was too sore in the face of such harshness from Mira, of all people, for anything but hurt to come out of her mouth. "Maybe it's you! Maybe you can't trust a meister anymore! Maybe you're just- maybe you don't work right anymore!" God, what awful things was she saying, to the girl who patted her shoulder when she was scared and cheered when she got a good grade and who cleared her paths through crowded, scary hallways? But she couldn't stop it anymore than she could stop her own heart from beating.

"Don't talk about things you don't know!" Mira spat, leaping to her feet. She grabbed her bookbag and rushed out the door, slamming it so hard the walls shook. The blue ribbon, fallen from her hair in her mad dash for escape, lay limply on the floor.


	7. Chapter 7

White Star woke up, slowly, and immediately wished he hadn't. His head was pounding in a way all too familiar, and his hands were bound behind his back, pulsing with pain in time to his heartbeat. "Brother," he whispered in quiet fury, rolling onto his belly and worming himself up into a sitting position, even as everything spun into a greyish blur.

"Quite right." White Star jumped at the voice, skin scraping against rocks as he scrabbled backwards. It took a moment for his eyes to make out the burly figure of his brother against the trees. Something stank, terribly, sulphur and pungunt minerals.

"You dick," White Star snarled, too ill to care that such disrespect would undoubtedly result in more pain. "You dosed me again, didn't you!"

Grey Star's lips just twitched, holding all the menace of a cobra flaring its hood, and White Star subsided a little, acutely aware of his vulnerability. "Thorn's very useful. He does his duty when I ask him for poison. I'm beginning to wonder if I can trust you to do yours, though, little brother." He squatted down and snagged White Star's chin between rough, merciless fingers, holding his face still. "You kept information about that witch from me. You truly think I don't know she's not just a powerless halfbreed?" He shook his pale head, then said musingly, "Cascadia's left far too many people alive who know about her."

"Her powers are nothing," White Star said, raging, wishing he'd taken more stringent measures to keep his searching secret, but he'd thought Seven was trustworthy. "She doesn't get cold, she doesn't get poisoned. Big damn deal. Where are we?" Something in the air had his hackles up.

Grey Star stood up, pulling a piece of cloth out of his pocket. "Osorezan." He planted a foot on White Star's chest and bound the cloth over his eyes, and White Star didn't even dare to move, not while his brother's green eyes were so bright and terrible; the blindfold was almost a mercy. "You're due back with Midori and your little witch in ten days. For every day you fail to report for your mission, I'm going to take piece of your flesh." White Star heard him turn, and, before disappearing soundlessly into the deep dark of the trees, he said softly, "Don't disappoint me, little brother, please. The Clan believes in you. We love you, and you've got a job to do for us. We need you, do you understand, and this is a gift to you, even if you don't see it now." That awful smile was back, incongruous dimples piercing his cheeks; White Star shuddered. "You do trust me, don't you? After all I've done for you?" Then he was gone as if he had never been, the air lightening with his absence.

"Shit," White Star whimpered, pushing his face against his knee until the blindfold was undone and he could see again. Grey Star hadn't tied it tightly, or bound his feet, thank god, but being dumped five hundred goddamn miles away in a place the locals called 'the Gateway to Hell' was a very clear and obvious warning, probably shrouded in several lessons he'd have to figure out to stay in one piece once he got back to the compound and his brother, who apparently thought nothing could ever truly be learned if it weren't taught under threat of imminent and painful demise. It would be unpleasant, hiking out of this place, particularly barefoot- that asshole had taken his boots- and it would be more irritating to find enough money for a plane ticket to Nevada in such a short time span, but it wasn't impossible. Worse than anything, though, was picturing the Clan, sorrowful disappointment in him on every face.

White Star shook his aching head and began maneuvering his hips back between his tied hands, so he could bring his wrists up under his legs and out in front of him. It _hurt_, yanked and wrenched his shoulders, and he grimaced and cursed at the uncaring trees, but eventually he wriggled his hands before him, ready to be freed.

It was all wasted effort. He stared numbly at the iron chains wrapping his wrists. Well, this would add a new dimension to the entire adventure.

For a second, he hated his brother so much, so passionately, that he would gladly have torn the man apart with his bare hands. He could almost smell the blood. Then he settled his forehead against the chilly chains and sighed dismally, pushing one bare foot through the decaying pine needles and soft, damp dirt.

It was all for his own good, he knew that, and he was acting just like a spoiled child, the very thing his brother was trying to replace with a man's independence. And he had kept a secret from the Clan, from the family; he deserved worse than this, honestly. He hung his head between his knees.

But then- why hadn't Midori simply told him they were trying to recruit Blacktail, to get on her good side? Why hadn't they let him _help_?

White Star clenched his fists until his nails ripped into his palms, because he knew. The bitter sulfur was harsh in his nostrils as he sucked in a rough breath, wishing he was better, wishing he deserved even remotely to be the heir of the Star Clan, to be the brother of the Ghost, the Widowmaker, Grey Star, the man whose shadow spanned continents, who'd spilled a river of enemy blood.

Blacktail popped into his mind, then. The night before she went off to enter the Academy, she'd been so quiet, saying nothing at all during the final briefing as they went back over their protocols. He'd simply assumed, a little scornfully, that she was scared.

But her face, when he'd finally bothered to really look- as unforgiving as stone, the childish roundness hardened into something very familiar.

"Look at you, so alive, so strange to see that here," someone whispered in his ear.

He screamed and rolled away, smashing his back against a tree and using the leverage to shoot to his feet. The woods were silent and empty, and he spun around, looking up, down, all around.

"Who said that," he asked shakily, plastering his back against the tree as the chains around his wrists clinked.

Something rustled. "Just me," the voice crooned, futher away now, and he tried to triangulate its position, but it was coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Just me!"

"I don't like talking to people I can't see!" His voice was wild, cracking in the middle, far too fearful, but he couldn't seem to stop it. All the things he'd heard about Osorezan jumped into his mind; suicides, missing people, flaming trees that never stopped burning and corpses that never rotted. His breathing grew faster.

"Look harder then, little boy." The voice was amused, sharp, with an odd intonation he couldn't quite place, speaking rather formal Japanese. He looked again, patting his pockets for a knife and finding nothing; his brother had really screwed him. The smell of sulphur was hot and stinging in his nose as the leaves whispered, and the moist ground slurped under his feet as he moved; he felt as if he were standing on the body of a barely-sleeping giant.

"Show yourself!" His skin was tingling.

"If you really want," said the voice. White Star blinked, and then his vision was full of red, bloodied entrails tied in neat bows around packages of organs and flayed skin, a myriad of weeping eyes blinking at him, a soft spiderweb of nerves overlaying it all. He choked, blindly reached out a hand to push the monstrosity away, and felt warm moist flesh squishing under his palm. Blood ran down his face, hot and metallic into his mouth, a burning fountain from nowhere.

He blinked again, and just before he could scream, the red all shrank into a shape, sitting hunched in a tree, and the blood was gone from his mouth. "Ah, apologies," the scarlet raven said, sounding very insincere, bobbing its head to peer at him with one brilliant ruby eye. "I've been in this forest a long time. Things multiply, if you know what I mean."

White Star leaned over as his gorge rose, coughing. Nothing came up, but he felt better for the attempt, fidgeting in the vivid remembrance of slick gore coating his skin. "What the fuck are you?" he barked, back still firmly pressed against the tree, heart still pounding frantic overtime.

"Ah, little boy, I'm just a lonely soul," said the raven wryly. It opened its beak, flashing tiny, pink, needle-sharp teeth.

White Star shuddered and clenched his jaw to hold back a howl as the dense trees spun slowly. This couldn't be real, it couldn't be, but it was, and he was alone now in this cursed demon forest, unarmed, easy prey for a starving monster, and his family was waiting and hoping for him to prove himself worthy of their love. "Don't come any closer," he spat, bristling. His hands had never felt so empty, nor his head so full.

The raven shuffled along its branch, maroon nails leaving smoking slits in the bark. "I'm sorry," it said, a little mournfully, feathers puffing up. "It's just I'm rather lonely and no one else in this forest likes blood as much as me, believe it or not, but then I saw you-"

"What are you?" White Star breathed, too raspy for his liking, fighting for calm, clenching his fists to keep from fleeing forever. He shifted his weight again, not liking the hungry softness of the earth pulling at his feet.

The bird winked at him with a gooey, blueish third eyelid, taking a dancing sort of half-step on its perch. "No name anymore, but I know the things I like and you like them too!"

"Blood," White Star croaked, dizzy with fear.

"_Blood_," cawed the raven, red plumage shining gently in the scarce light that made it through the dense trees. "Blood, over everything, blood blood blood."

"Touch me and I'll kill you!" White Star shrieked, hands up in front of his face, chains clanging as he trembled.

"I won't, I won't!" The raven morphed into a mass of gleaming stuttering hearts, for just a moment, beating and slick, before compressing back to feathers and mirth."I'll just watch, don't worry, just watching, if you don't make it out of here maybe we can bleed things together, maybe? Let's bleed things, let's cut them, slice them, let's hang them by the heels and watch it all pour out, all the red, all the pretty red, _all the pretty red!"_

"Brother!" White Star screamed, and then his resolve broke, and he ran.

* * *

Mira slouched back into their dorm at midnight, well past curfew, tie askew and dreadlocks unbound. "Hi!" Olivia said immediately, shutting the textbook she'd been pretending to read with a thump.

Mira pinned her with a dirty look. "I'm not talking to you," she said shortly before disappearing into the bathroom.

Olivia grimaced, began gnawing on her lip in earnest, and hugged her pillow tight, waiting nervously for her roommate to reappear. When Mira eventually did, she was wearing her shabby plaid pajamas and a look of furious disdain that made deep wrinkles in her bandages. "Not talking," she reiterated darkly before diving under her covers.

"I've still got your blanket, though," Olivia said, quaking irritably. The quilt-covered lump adjacent to her grumbled something that sounded profane. "I know you don't sleep good without it!" Olivia patted the cream-colored, knitted wool gently, biting her lip harder to keep it from trembling.

"Sleep just _fine_," said the lump, viciously, before curling up tighter. A bandaged arm snaked out from beneath the quilts, aiming for the bedside tables.

Olivia moved faster, snatching up the stuffed lamb sitting there. "Eimy's, wasn't it?" she said, a wild guess, fingers digging into plushy fleece.

Mira reacted with a little more vitriol than Olivia had expected, shooting out from under her blankets towards the lamb, snarl complete with furious harpy shrieking. It did confirm Olivia's theory on the origins of the lamb, though. "Give me! Give it to me! That's not for you to touch!"

"Then don't leave it lying around!" Olivia squeaked, only just dodging a furious grab by her roommate. Mira was flushed and growling, but Olivia was just as red, fueled by anger and something else. Jealousy, maybe? Or anger at Cascadia, at her father, at everyone who had guided her into this unhappy path, the one where she lied and betrayed and backstabbed a person whose very soul was so luxuriously perfect against her own lonely spirit? She wasn't sure, but it hurt her stomach terribly.

"I didn't!" Mira hissed, swiping at the lamb.

Olivia pulled it out of her reach, but toppled off her own bed with the movement, hitting the floor with a grunt. "Ow," she cried, before scrabbling backwards out of Mira's reach. "Get off! I'm not giving it back until we figure this out!"

Mira's eyes were bluer than anything Olivia had ever dreamed. "There's nothing to figure out!" Mira snapped, diving off the bed and onto Olivia, turning them into a single, flailing octopus of tangled limbs as they rolled across the floor. "It's mine, give it back!"

"No!"

"You had better give it back right now or-"

"Or what? What are you gonna do, huh?" Close to furious, with hot dampness still tingling in her eyes, Olivia hooked a leg inside Mira's calf and managed to lever her over, onto her back, so Olivia could pin her down, still brandishing the lamb. "I don't like fighting!" She felt sore all over, from her soul out, as Mira raged up at her.

"Give it!"

"I won't!" Olivia shoved, forced them into resonance with all the bitter betrayal of her too-long silenced heart.

Mira howled as their link flickered into furious life. "What is wrong with you! Why do you hurt so much!"

"I don't _hurt_!" Olivia shouted, aware of how ridiculous her lie sounded as her soul shook and shivered. Mira settled, slowly, staring up at her, and for a long second they simply stayed, frozen, as their souls huddled together.

Mira softened, then, and the resonance went so warm and sweet that Olivia's eyes welled up again. "Look, I guess we're both kind of fucked up, you know?" Mira offered, stroking the lamb's velour nose.

Olivia handed it over silently and rolled off Mira to scoot back against her bed, pulling her knees to her chest and hiding her face in them. She felt explosive, pent up, a bomb with a lit fuse. "Guess so." If only Mira knew, had even an inkling, of all the things Olivia had done, the presence in her head wouldn't be so flame-bright.

Mira sat up, sending soothing little flutters along the resonance, and Olivia sighed in spite of herself. "I wish you could tell me what's wrong."

"I wish I could too," Olivia whispered, and then, because somehow, magically, their link told her what Mira wanted. "It's not that I don't trust you! I do! I just- I just can't."

"It's okay. I'm your weapon," Mira said stoutly, fist clenching in the lamb's worn-out wool. "We take all kinds of hits for our meisters. I can carry this for you." She flicked a glance up from under damp lashes.

"I-" What could Olivia say to that? She was crying now, hard, and she could only think repeatedly that she didn't want to go back to laboratories and cold-blooded murder. She didn't want to close her eyes and pretend that she hadn't just taken a father away from his children or a daughter from her mother. Mira hummed, still cuddling the lamb, and then she started peeling away the bandages from her face. Olivia peeked up, startled, as a firm chin was revealed, then a pert feminine nose, then a wide wise forehead, currently wrinkled in a frown. "Oh," was all Olivia could get out. She was reminded of towering trees and the northern lights and moonlight, everything beautiful and calm and enduring.

Mira raised a brow wryly, and Olivia watched it lift, entranced. Mira's face was somehow just as she'd imagined, yet so very much better. Had Olivia ever imagined being liked by such a person, being so cared about by someone else that she could actually hurt them with mere words? No. She'd never dared.

"Well?" Mira said at last, scowling horribly. "Have I made you go blind or something, then?"

"Um. Nope," Olivia said faintly.

"Well, then. Good." Mira stood up, walked around Olivia's bed, and plopped the lamb back into its place on her own nightstand. "Good night." She got under her covers, just like that, as if nothing had happened, leaving her discarded bandages lying in a heap on the floor.

Olivia looked at them for a while, marveling at the way she could feel Mira drifting towards sleep, at the way she could sent out a little tendril of amazement and feel Mira's wry, sleepy, sizzling pushback, all of it contained inside her skull. Olivia's secrets were still there, but Mira had lanced the poison, and finally Olivia pushed herself upright, folded Mira's bandages, flicked off the light, and tucked herself in, grinning into the dark room. How silly of witches, to think that they could compete with a thing as pure and lovely as two souls in perfect harmony. She kept smiling until she joined her weapon in slumber.

* * *

White Star was most assuredly not smiling.

It was coming night now, or perhaps it had simply been twilight for all the hours he'd been in this cursed gateway to hell; he couldn't tell. The dim light filtering through the thickly packed trees didn't seem to change, and the thick mineral stink rising up from the sodden ground with each plodding step never lessened. He had to keep one hand clenched around his arm, where his clan tattoo would go one day, to drive his stuttering feet onwards.

"You're going the wrong way, little boy," said the raven hopping along in the trees beside him, a long, forked tongue lolling out of its beak for a moment, spattering acidic spittle over his shoulder.

He flicked it off, wincing at the red marks it left. "Go away."

"Can't. Won't. I'd really rather not, if that's all right with you, pretty please."

"You fucking ugly ass chicken!" White Star exploded, whirling on the cursed thing that he'd been unable to outrun, chained wrists rattling as he shook his fists. "Go away!"

"Ah, that hurts me, that does, deep down in my innocent heart," the raven laughed, wings flapping as it jumped to a lower branch.

"Innocent heart, my ass," White Star muttered, closing his eye as tight as he could, trying desperately to will away the monochrome hell his bastard brother had dumped him into. His eyes popped open, though, as a hot and very obviously unnatural wind gusted across the back of his neck, and as he sprang forward- "Shit!"

"Oh, oh dearie me, goodness gracious, it does seem you've found yourself trapped in a trap, little boy," said the raven. White Star thrashed, gripping desperately onto the trunk of the nearest tree with his bound hands, hanging on for dear life as the soft, muddy gunk he'd stepped into sucked greedily on his leg. Something smooth and white rose to the top of the morass for a moment, and he yelped in a very un-ninja like way, clinging harder to the tree. He'd seen enough skulls to recognize one right away.

After a hot, sweaty, frantic thirty seconds, he managed to establish a kind of equilibrium, in which at least the pit of quicksand doom wasn't slurping him in any further, though try as he might, he couldn't quite get enough leverage to pull free, not with his hands chained and only one leg at liberty. Instead, he just ended up doing the splits, precariously, wrapping his free leg around the tree like a deranged stripper. The Clan would not be remotely proud of him at that moment, and even if he'd finally managed to stop shrieking like a prom queen, this ridiculous situation wasn't much better. Sick shame blended with the bone-deep fatigue and made him tremble.

He sighed in pure exhaustion and leaned his forehead against his saviour tree trunk for a moment. When he opened his eyes, he screamed and nearly let go; the red raven was not an inch from his face, and this close it looked much larger than he would have thought, heavy beak curved and lethal-looking. "What the fuck- get away, shoo, go on!" he snarled, wishing he dared let go of the tree to slap it away.

"I could help," it said smoothly. He watched in weird horror as its pupils dilated rapidly then shrank, in and out, over and over.

"Star Clan doesn't need help," he snarled, highly aware now, in the crisp, tired aftermath of a day full of impossible terrors and strenuous exertion, that he was backtalking an impertinent bird with a penchant for occasionally changing into a miniature charnel house. It was absurd, but laughing and calling it absurd was better than admitting that his nerves were fraying, white-hot pinpricks under his skin, or that the chemical tang in the air reminded him more and more of a battlefield with every breath, or that he had somehow lost track of which way was north.

He was chuckling, and it took the raven's delighted caw to snap him to silence. "Well, then, little boy, I'll leave you to the quicksand," the bird said, cruelly, beak snapping with startling volume.

"Don't call me that," he said, too wearily, slipping a precious centimeter downwards.

The raven cackled and retreated a little, wingbeats fanning a stench like ash and burned rubber at him. "Something much worse than me laid this trap, and you're all caught up in it, a fly in a spiderweb. Try and get free, then, if you don't need help? Oh? Oh, what's that, you can't get loose?" That massive bony beak clicked again, in clear amusement. "Oh, I can hear her- she's coming- hell's got nothing on this one, better pray, Star Clan, or bow that stiff neck of yours!"

"I hate you, I hate you," White Star moaned frantically, sweaty hands skidding against the bark as the quicksand pulled. That hot breeze was back, twisting all around him, even though the leaves didn't move at all, and there was something black and glutinous seeping up from the dirt all around him. He closed his eyes, listened with all the skills Grey Star had passed on, and sure enough, a distant thump met his ears, then another; too loud for it, but they were unmistakeably footsteps.

"Well?" said the raven, running its beak over a stray feather fastidiously.

"Tell me what you are first," White Star bargained, licking dry lips. Some things- some things in the world were even worse than whatever was rattling the earth. Stories from his childhood marched a monstrous parade through his head.

"I told you, I already told you! I'm just something dead," said the raven, sounding almost sad. Then it whistled, split tongue flapping nauseatingly down to its glossy breast. "Things grow if you plant them in the soil, and there are a lot of dead things in this particular forest. They sowed, I reaped."

"You're just a spirit? A ghost?" The distant thumps were growing closer far too quickly.

"Mostly," said the raven slyly. "Ask no questions, hear no lies, no?"

White Star grimaced. That platitude reminded him uncomfortably of Midori and his irritating and never-ending proverbs. "What will it cost me?" he grunted, sweating profusely now as the hot wind caressed him.

"Take me out of here," said the bird. "Free me." For a heartbeat, it was a sodden lump of unholy gasping flesh, dotted with boils and exuding such a foul smell that White Star had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from puking.

"Will you turn on me?" Those massive footsteps were so close now that he could feel his teeth rattling.

"No, no, never, on all the honor a ghost can have," the raven said piously, a wicked glitter in its eyes.

White Star cursed, smacked his head against the tree trunk out of sheer fury, and cried out, "Fine! But we've a seer in the Clan, if you turn on me I'll have you exorcised faster than anything, do you understand me?"

The raven tilted its head. "Such cold words, little boy," it mocked, skip-stepping sideways. "Don't you know a good ghost never stops haunting people like you?" With that, it shifted, and suddenly White Star's precious tree was gone. "Don't let go!" the raven barked, holding the other end of the long rope of slimy intestine White Star was now holding.

"God damnit," White Star snarled as a misty green shape appeared between the trees, another step shaking the ground. He gagged, tied hands slipping and tangling on the slick guts, but he didn't let go, not with the quicksand still tight around his leg.

The raven pulled, wings fluttering as it hopped backwards, and miraculously, White Star felt himself being pulled free, inch by painful inch. The greenish shadow was making its way closer, now, and if he squinted, he thought he could see rather large teeth. "Christ! Can you fucking hurry, possibly, please," he pleaded, somehow hoping that his brother would drop out of nowhere to save the day, as he'd done so many times before.

The raven somehow managed to convey irritation with a squint of one beady eye, but it gave a good yank and White Star popped free with a stomach-turning squish. He stumbled to his feet, dropping the rope of guts as fast as he possibly could, put his back to the rumbling green shape and ran, adrenaline and primal terror spiking his bloodstream as the hot wind lashed his skin.

The raven kept pace, dodging the close-packed trees with ease even as White Star pinballed off them carelessly in his mad rush. "Welcome, you're very welcome for your life," it drawled snidely, flying on wings intermittently made of beautifully bleached bones.

White Star was going mad. He'd lost it, his brother would come back only to find him rocking back and forth on the ground, probably sucking his fucking thumb, and the name of 'White Star' would live in infamy among the Clan, a synonym for failure, pathetic, weak, ungrateful. White Star put his head down and ran harder, uncaring of the reaching branches that stabbed and scraped his skin, ignoring the gleeful wails of the spectral raven.

* * *

"Jennifer, can you run these down to storage for me? They're last term's sophomore textbooks, they're just taking up space," Miss Yumi said, invisible from behind the teetering stack of books wobbling in her arms.

It was so sudden that for a moment Olivia didn't even realize her moment had arrived. "The- the catacombs?" she said blankly, nearly biting her tongue.

"Yes, yes, just go down stairwell around the corner, there's a sign, room 46X, password is 'shampoo'," Miss Yumi said impatiently, dumping the massively heavy books into Olivia's arms so suddenly that the stack nearly toppled, along with Olivia. Miss Yumi pushed her spectacles up her nose and sighed, looking rather harried. Even her usually impeccable black bob was mussed a bit. "Midterms- by Death himself- it's times like these I wonder why I became a teacher!" she said to nobody in particular, throwing up her hands before turning, rather grimly, to attend to the ravenous mob of students crowding against the counter of the library help desk. One girl, apparently lacking any instinct for self-preservation, was halfway over the desk and reaching desperately for a text marked 'North American Evil Over Three Centuries'. Miss Yumi brandished her 'overdue' stamp with rather overdone lethality before heading into the fray.

Olivia, biting down a sick smile, snagged an empty book cart, arranged her load onto it, and managed to work her way to the exit through the clamoring mass of wild-eyed, ink-smudged students in the library. This was it- her opportunity- and by the looks of the lunchtime crowd who'd poured in to study for upcoming midterms, Miss Yumi would be busy for a while.

Olivia felt almost dizzy, and once she got to the stairwell, she realized the book cart wasn't going to roll down it short of magical intervention by Death himself. Perhaps the smooth elevators at Cascadia had spoiled her a bit, but this place did seem to have an overabundance of stairs. Maybe it was a secret tactic by Lord Death to build up the students' endurance. The act of re-stacking the books into her arms and edging sideways down the stairs, praying that the pile wouldn't topple, sobered her a little, and though she was sweating from the effort by the time she reached the catacombs, she felt more level, more ready. Anticipation and fear made her breath come fast.

There were no signs except for the one in the stairwell reading 'Floor Zero', no arrows pointing her in the right direction, only an apparently infinite maze of identical brick walls adorned with rather dungeon-esque skull-shaped lanterns. She made it a point to scowl at all of them, if only to entertain herself a little, and eventually she got so caught up in a ridiculous fantasy of dramatically tearing off Lord Death's skull mask to the sound of her father's rabid applause that she nearly missed the tiny sign labeled '46X'.

"Crud," she muttered, staring at it as the lamplight flickered. She was here, she'd gained access, finally, after seven long and confusing weeks in this place, but now that she was here- well, she didn't feel quite as euphoric as she'd been expecting. She kept imagining Mira's face against her will, picturing betrayal and hurt on her weapon's pretty features.

That was fine, though. Her father would be euphoric enough for both of them when she brought him all the secrets of human weapons. She took a deep breath, steadied the wavering tower of books, and pushed at the door with her hip.

It didn't move. Instead she squeaked as an electric shock ran through her body, books falling onto the floor with a clatter that seemed magnified by the closeness of the catacombs. "Crud!" she said again, this time in earnest, rather disgusted with herself. Of course it was locked. The password- but there was no keypad, no place to type anything in. The door to 49X was featureless, dark green with no windows at all, and only a small golden keyhole below a shiny, round doorknob. It was all very plain.

It didn't make any sense. She examined the door more closely, running her fingers over the knob and the keyhole, along the edges and over the wall beside it, ignoring the staticky prickle it was still hitting her with, but there was nothing. Why would Miss Yumi send her down here with a password that obviously was wrong? Had she given out an incorrect room number by mistake? No, never- Olivia dismissed that thought right away- Miss Yumi was far too diligent and detail-oriented to do something like that, even distracted by the entire school population mobbing her desk.

Olivia kicked the door once, out of pure frustration, and then she did it again, several times, feeling a little better. Calmer, she started studying the door again, thinking. It was unlikely the number was wrong, considering Miss Yumi went down here quite often and had worked at the school for several years. It was even more unlikely that such a ridiculous password as 'shampoo' had been forgotten. What did that leave as possibilities?

She'd been found out. This was some sort of elaborate set-up, to trap her, there were undoubtedly cameras on her right now- but simply going where a teacher had ordered her to go could hardly be proof of anything, could it? God, none of this made sense, but she was scared nonetheless. Her heart was racing as she stared at the gleaming doorknob, her own reflection upside down and gilded; it wagged a tiny, distorted finger at her chidingly, taking a moment to rebel as it did more and more often these days, and she clamped a hand over her mouth. Maybe not a set-up then, but _something_, something was wrong here, and she needed very quickly to figure out what it was before-

A hand fell on her shoulder. She yelped, spun around, adrenaline flooding her veins, and before she even knew what she was doing, instinct took over and she had her assailant smashed against the wall, one arm twisted behind his back.

"Owowowowowow!" he was wailing, in a very un-murderous, not at all assassin-like way. She stepped back immediately, cringing, cursing herself, because innocent Jennifer Mason wouldn't react so violently to a touch like that.

The boy she'd assaulted turned around, peering wide-eyed up at her and rubbing his shoulder, looking reproachful and not a little terrified simultaneously. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he was saying. He had light hair and looked vaguely familar, but she couldn't quite place him.

"No, no, um, I'm sorry," she said nervously, trying her best to flash a disarming smile. She thought fast, then said, with a little shiver for effect, "It's these catacombs, you know? They're like a dungeon, they really creep me out, and I got a bit lost there for a while, bringing these books down for Miss Yumi, and you snuck up on me-" She gestured at the literature scattered all around them on the floor. The boy blinked at the books.

"Oh. Well-"

"I really am sorry," she added hastily, fully panicked behind the cover of her apologetic face. "I just got scared. You startled me."

"It's okay, I guess," the boy said. He had a very soft, unassuming voice that went well with his soft, average appearance. "She actually sent me down here, she realized that you'd never been taught how to open sealed rooms on this floor."

"Oh. I, um, yeah, I was kind of wondering about that," Olivia said lamely. Her frantic brain felt wheels spinning in snow.

"Here," the boy said. He went over to the door and took out his wallet, holding his student identification card up to the keyhole. "Shampoo," he said, very clearly. There was a whooshing sound, the lanterns flickered harder, and then there was an audible click as the door swung open silently.

Olivia could only gape. Well, that was not at all what she'd been expecting. "Uh- how- how? It didn't shock you?"

The boy shrugged and started gathering up a few of her books; she moved silently to help him, immediately becoming aware of the terrible fact that someone had intruded upon her reconnaisance of the coveted library storage room. Hopefully she could get him out of her hair soon, as long as she could keep her stupid mouth from asking anymore stupid questions. It was a pity she couldn't just knock him out and dump him in a closet, the way she would have on a proper mission. All this waiting and faking and lying was really beginning to take a toll on her.

But instead of leaving, he snagged the final book out from under her fingertips and led the way into the room, which turned out to be so astonishingly large that her heart sank. There were stacks upon stacks of books, none of which appeared to be labeled in any clear way, and the shelves were groaning with even more dusty volumes. The whole place smelled of dust and abandonment.

"It's a thing built into our ID cards that lets us in with the password, the shock's just to discourage students from meddling," the boy said, and she nearly jumped, having practically forgotten about him in the rush of despair the sheer size of the room had triggered. At least he didn't appear to be holding her little overreaction against her. She hadn't been lying anyway, really; these catacombs _were_ creepy. Still, a misstep like this could have had dire consequences.

"A sensor? Magnetic or laser? And- what, uh, voice recognition?" she asked absently, weaving through stacks of books taller than she was towards a table that appeared to have an empty patch.

"You're into technology, then?" the boy said, and suddenly he was rather close behind her, and the air was thick, because his tone was perfectly casual, but he'd answered her question with another question, classic interrogation, and his appearance had been so well timed, right as she reached her goal. It all added up to something very bad, something that made her rigid, and only the sure wiry tension of her muscles and the solid assurance of her heavy boots gave her any bravery at all.

"A little," she said, still walking, not looking at him, putting all of White Star's smooth untouchable sureness into her voice. Maria had always said that admitting a weakness was a good way to gain sympathy, to shrug off suspicion. "I was sort of hoping it was, uh, technology of some sort. It's a little disturbing to think that I'm running around with a piece of Lord Death's magic on my body at all times, you know? I mean, it's silly to feel that way, of course, but it still scares me a little. I'm still not used to all of this." She threw in a shrug and a nervous little chuckle, just for effect, and kept her eyes fixed on that table, even as her small blonde persecutor dogged her heels.

"It's not common knowledge, but yes, it's a bit of his magic," the boy said. "Now you know, though, how most of the secret doors unlock. Might come in handy, no?" Another question. She was sure now, he was digging for something, and she couldn't imagine what, she'd been pristine since she'd walked up those glowing white steps into the DWMA, but it was there, unerring, clogging her veins and drying her mouth.

She laughed again, lightly, gripping the books in her arms tight to quell the frantic urge to _hurt_ him and run. "I can't think how it would help me, really, unless the teachers have the answer keys to all their tests stashed away somewhere in here," she joked.

He hummed a little, keenly, and her nerves were ablaze. She reached the table with a feeling far greater than relief and slammed the books down, edging them aside; there was only just room for the boy to put down his own stack. Dust billowed up from the tabletop and Olivia coughed, waving a hand in front of her eyes. When she looked up, the boy was watching her, dark gaze narrow and as sharp as one of Midori's daggers, a quick searching glance that disappeared so fast she could almost believe she'd imagined it. "Well," he said genially, all smiles now. "Glad I could help."

She had to get a moment alone in here, had to. God only knew how long it would be before Miss Yumi sent her down here again. "Oh, well, I had better shelve these," she said, waving a hand at the stacks they'd just set down.

It was a poor attempt at ushering him out, and the tiny smirk on his mouth said he knew it. "Oh, don't bother, Miss Yumi doesn't really have any kind of filing system down here, it's chaos," he said, heading back towards the door. She followed, hating him, hating everything, halfway hoping one of the book towers would spontaneously avalanche on top of him. "Come on, I'll show you how to lock the door," he said over his shoulder, twisting the knife, telling her all too clearly that he wasn't going anywhere unless she was gone too.

She smiled brightly, Mira's smile, lovely and trusting and as unblemished as a spring blossom. "Okay! Thanks! It's a good thing you came down here after me, isn't it?"

He held the door open for her and motioned her through first, a perfect gentleman. She despised him and his knowing eyes. What did he know, and more importantly, _how_?

Locking the door was easy, simply the reverse of unlocking it, but he tailed her all the way back up the stairs to the library, smiling all the way. She took the steps two at a time, furious, raging behind her veneer of friendliness, hoping to outpace him or leave him panting, but even with his smaller stature he kept up easily. He was so slight, he had to be in a freshman like her, thirteen or fourteen years old- but then the lankiness of his stride and the stretched quality of his limbs suggested he'd be rather tall someday. She hated him in a way she hadn't hated anyone for a long time.

"You, uh, you never told me your name," she said, when they reached the library.

He grinned at her, any trace of shyness he'd been wearing at first long gone in the wake of his clear victory. "Joe Buttataki. Pleased to make your acquaintance, uh-?"

"Jennifer," she gritted through her liar's smile, incensed, not deigning to give him her last name, fake though it might be, and then, stymied, she turned on her heel and marched into the packed library, throwing elbows and stomping stray feet with a level of aggression that would have done Mira proud.


	8. Chapter 8

That night, when Mira came into the dorm room, she was greeted by a meister who had eyes like a stormcloud and was sitting on the bed in a pile of crumpled up papers, homework gone wrong.

"Trouble?" Mira said, eyeing Olivia warily.

"No. Yes. Ugh!" Olivia flopped back on her bed, plastered a pillow over her face, and indulged in a brief scream. She went upright again to see Mira shivering, and to Olivia's secret, suprised delight, the water inside the plastic bottle Mira held had turned to solid ice.

"What's up?" Mira said, beginning to peel her bandages off, starting at her wrists and working upwards.

"It's just- well-" Olivia was hunting for the right words to convey the vicious mix of irritation, fear and failure that was souring her stomach, but before she could, Mira had frowned in concern and then they were resonating.

"Oh," Mira said after a second, raising a brow. "You're, like, really pissed about something. Was it Denny? If that asshole said anything to you I swear to Death I'll rip his-"

"No," Olivia groaned, flopping backwards again to stare at her ceiling. Mira read her so easily it was almost scary, but viewed as Jennifer Mason instead of Olivia the spy, it was nice, having such easy communication with another person who was guaranteed to understand. "Not him, he just ignores me or tries to look scary. It's just-" How much could she say? How much could she share without putting herself, or worse, Mira, in danger?

Mira came over and sat on the bed beside Olivia, brushing a few crumpled attempts at an essay aside. "Whatever it is it's not helping your attempts to do homework," she observed, kicking off her shoes.

Olivia put one forearm over her eyes and tried to breathe slowly, through her nose, to will away the frustration of Joe's interruption. "I was trying to do a thing today and it didn't work out and I'm worried my- my parents will be angry," she said slowly, not wanting to lie outright when they were resonating so strongly. For all she knew, Mira would be able to tell.

"Vague," Mira mumbled, but when Olivia didn't offer any clarification, she just sighed and rested her unbandaged hand carefully on her meister's free hand. "Sorry it didn't turn out like you hoped. Maybe next time?"

Olivia grimaced. She felt like a wire pulled tight, vibrating with tension and pent-up emotion, and lying to Mira yet again wasn't helping, particularly not at the moment, when she had to forcibly ignore it all to keep the resonance alive and Mira from feeling her guilt. "Maybe."

"Don't give up. You're a badass, it'll work out," Mira said, patting Olivia's arm gently before standing up and heading towards the bathroom, sending out little waves of encouragment through the bond. God, it was so easy now; how had they ever struggled?

Olivia sat up, then stood up, and by the time Mira came back out, Olivia was pacing like a caged lion through the balled-up remnants of her failed essay. Mira, fully unbandaged now, crossed her arms and proceeded to scowl for several moments, until Olivia finally noticed, and then Mira said, "You feel like a bent Slinkie. What the hell's up?"

"It's just stupid stuff," Olivia said despairingly, fidgeting. "Bunch of homework, and just- stupid stuff."

"Oh," Mira said, shaking her head. "Want help? Bet you're doing that paper for Luma about the Academy's research into what affects resonance wavelengths, right? I did it last year, I probably have it somewhere..."

"No, it's okay," Olivia said. The very last thing she wanted to write about was how trust and honesty and bonding affected resonance. All it did was underline and italicize the guilt she felt every minute of every day now, since Mira whittled off a little chunk of her heart. Then inspiration struck, and she leapt up, grabbing Mira's hand. "Let's go get coffee. Let's, uh, go for a walk. Something. Let's get out of here." She had to escape the looming, suspicious walls of this place, and the terrifying suspicion that someone within them knew exactly what she was.

Mira snorted, but she looked amused. "It's nine-thirty. Where on earth are we gonna go and get back before curfew?"

"Screw the curfew," Olivia said boldly. This wasn't Jennifer Mason the placid and unremarkable rule-follower, this was _Olivia_, the witch who had seven long, long week's worth of stymied energy and violence and conflict boiling up and out. "What can they do to us? Detention? Nothing worse, not for being a little late getting back."

"They lock the doors to the dorms at ten," Mira protested, yet her eyes were glinting.

"How- you always come in late, though, where are you, then?" Olivia said, momentarily deterred by confusion.

Mira shrugged. "I sit in the lobby, the hallway, whatever. Read. Sometimes the quiet is nice. But they lock the doors to this entire building, all of them, at ten, if you're not somewhere inside you're out of luck."

Even as she filed away that information for use in future mission escapades, Olivia held Mira's hand tighter. "So we climb in the window," she said. "We're only on the second floor. We'll leave it unlocked, and you can transform and I'll just carry you up. Easy."

Mira eyed her, a little smile playing over her lips. "Okay."

"Really? Just like that?" Olivia giggled. "You don't want to bandage up?"

Mira considered, but then said, "No need. It's nighttime and where we're going no one will see us."

"Wait, where are we going?" Olivia said eagerly, but Mira only dashed over to the window, unlocked it, and was out the door like a whirlwind. Olivia pushed on her boots hastily and followed, grinning so broadly she felt her face might crack. They calmed a little, walked nonchalantly down the hallways as if they were doing nothing at all, even managed a little nod at Mr. Marquis when they passed him outside the walls of the girls' dorm. Then they were cackling wildly as they ran past the dimly lit, dewy lawns circling the basketball courts, out the walls of the Academy through a little side door, and down into the main area of the city, pausing for breath under a flickering street lamp and ignoring the few civilian passerby who were eyeing them strangely. Olivia had her battered black sweatpants tucked hastily into her boots and was wearing only a thin purple hoodie, looking rather homeless, truth be told, whereas Mira still had on her uniform, clearly marking them as delinquent students.

"We're free," Mira said gustily, clutching her ribs as she gave into an adrenaline-fueled attack of the giggles.

"God, and we have midterms in three days, this is nuts-"

"So?"

"So! So what!"

"Fuck midterms!" They looked at each other, than burst into laughter again, staggering around the sidewalk, leaning on each other.

"So where are we going?" Olivia asked again when she caught her breath. She thought absently that her weapon- _her_ weapon, what a strange and wonderful thought that was- looked rather lovely right now, face uncovered and beaming, lit from above by the streetlamp, rather like an angel. It turned her blue eyes greenish and misty, like morning fog over a field.

"There," Mira said, pointing.

Olivia squinted and then her jaw fell open. "You want us to climb the clock tower?"

"Hey, in for a penny, in for a pound. We're already in trouble and anyway I've always kind of wanted to see it up close," Mira chortled, grinning. She looked flushed and giddy.

"Okay," Olivia said, caught up in the buzzing adrenaline flickering at her from her weapon. "Okay, let's go." They ran through the twisted, winding streets, hands clasped, flashing in and out of light and dark as they passed by all the shining streetlamps. The clock tower was unbelievably tall when at last they reached it, unexpectedly so, to the point that Olivia had to crane her neck back to peer at the top of it, and it seemed rather somber, dark grey brickwork punctuated by angels and devils carved in such detail that they looked as if they could leap to raging life any moment. They were deeply shadowed in this farway corner of the city, eating up all the nighttime and throwing back the lamplight from the street in grey impish gleams from the curves of wings and horns and fangs.

"Have you been here before?" Olivia said, catching her breath. Her stamina had really gone downhill, and she resolved to start jogging at lunchtime; it wouldn't do to have Midori be disappointed in her.

"No," Mira admitted, shadowing her eyes with her hands to peer inside, through the stained-glass windows of the locked front door. "It looks like a church, doesn't it?"

"Not really," Olivia lied. It did, in fact, and despite her disbelief in belief in general, somewhere in her life she seemed to have picked up a superstitious sort of dread of churches and holiness.

Mira hummed, jogging to the corner of the building and disappearing for a moment; she came back looking more than a bit down, frowning. "Side door's locked, too, chained and everything. Shit. Maybe this was a bad idea."

Even if they hadn't been resonating, every single emotion Mira felt was writ clear on her face without the bandages; maybe that was why she wore them. Olivia grimaced, but the disappointed cast to her weapon's face was more than she could bear.

"No, I've got this," she said, playing at being the Jennifer who wanted to help her friend, before Olivia the spy could swoop in with more prudent judgement against stupid and foolhardy impulses. "Just go stand over there, okay, in that alley? Whistle if anyone comes by." Mira blinked and her jaw dropped, but Olivia shoved her in the direction of the alley across the narrow street and swooped around the corner of the clock tower in an instant, aiming for the side door, where her little crime wouldn't be on display to any cars or passerby.

She almost laughed when she saw the door; a frail, rusted bike chain was wrapped loosely through the two metal handles, and a chunky metal padlock that was probably fifty years old was clasped around it. This was ridiculous, really, and she had ripped the underwires out from her bra in half a second, bent them into the proper shapes, and was attacking the defenseless lock gleefully in the next. Luckily the clock tower was in a quiet part of town, with little traffic to distract her as she listened to the click and rattle of the lock's guts.

It only took perhaps three minutes to undo the lock, but when she slipped back around the tower to collect Mira, her poor weapon was practically gnawing her fingertips off. "It's fine," Olivia said, lips twitching; for once, Mira wasn't the confident one leading the charge. It was strange, but it was a nice sort of change, and Olivia liked feeling competent and normal for once. "I was so focused I didn't feel you freaking out, I'm sorry. Come on, door's open." She turned and was ten feet away before she realized Mira wasn't following.

"The door?" Mira said, feet planted. "But it was locked-"

"We're exposed," Olivia hissed, growing rapidly impatient, and she knew Mira would feel it through their bond but she couldn't seem to stop, not after the day she'd had. "Come on, get out of the road." When she grabbed Mira's elbow to haul her over to the side door, Mira came easily enough, but once they were safely around the corner she yanked her arm away and proceeded to wring her hands, scuff her feet, and scowl in a horrified sort of way at the discarded bike chain puddled next to the door. She looked at Olivia sideways, with wide eyes, as if she'd somehow sensed that right now, her meister was fully in control, fully unafraid, fundamentally _different_ from the shy flamingo girl she'd so slowly befriended.

"How did you do that?" she said hesitantly. "This is breaking and entering, Jen, I don't know-"

A cold autumn wind picked up sharply, flapping Mira's tie about wildly. "Jen?" Olivia said, in utter surprise, and her voice was shaky. "Oh, I _like_ that." A nickname, at long last, and from Mira's beautiful lips- the preciousness of it bubbled over and she launched herself at Mira, wrapping her arms around the other girl with a desperate, unfamiliar sort of need, and Mira didn't fight it at all, arms coming around Olivia in an instant, warm and strong, the same as their resonance.

"It'll be fine, I promise, there's no alarm on the door, not a thing. This place is older than dirt, there's no car anywhere outside, and it's too small to have living quarters, no one's here," Olivia explained, flushing, after she'd collected herself a little and released Mira, who looked bemused, yet pleased, and much more compliant.

"All right," Mira sighed, fidgeting with her tie. "If you're totally sure."

"One hundred percent," Olivia said, that cheek-hurting smile creeping back onto her face. "Let's go." Mira ended up holding on almost uncomfortably tight to Olivia's elbow as they crept through the door, shutting it carefully behind them with a foreboding creak, and she stayed that way as Olivia led them towards the metal stairway spiraling upwards. They'd ended up in a basement of some sorts, it seemed, dusty and packed with various bits of machinery and tools, smelling sweetly of grease and damp. The only light was from a few dim, cobwebby little windows, but it was enough for Olivia to steer them properly.

"This is crazy," Mira said, for possibly the fifth time, but she sounded excited again, and it was catching. For the first time in weeks, Olivia felt like herself again, and this wasn't a mission that would require killing, and best of all, she had Mira beside her to share it all with.

The staircase was rickety, and it was so fragile it seemed almost spun from air, a dark delicate spiral creeping and twisting like dead ivy against the deeper blackness of the tower's walls. When they set foot on the first step, simultaneously, the entire construction gave a monstrous keening squeal.

"Oh my god," Mira said faintly. "I sort of pictured myself dying heroically, not by falling down a bunch of decaying stairs."

Olivia huffed impatiently, put more of her weight on the stairs, and gave them a little shake, gripping the handrail. They rattled, but they held firm. "I think we'll be all right." She felt rabid, electric, and creeping through the dark had lit coals beneath her feet. She was real again, she was doing what she'd been born to do, and maybe Mira felt it, because when Olivia started tiptoeing up the stairs, Mira followed silently.

It was slow going. Olivia, in front, had to keep brushing cobwebs out of her eyes, and the circular, vertical shaft that the stairs led up into had few windows. Mira kept making an obnoxious hissing noise from between her teeth, very distracting, and finally Olivia stopped and whispered sharply, "Can you stop? How do you expect me to listen for danger with you grunting like a pig with a stomachache back there?" She'd put so much of Midori into her reprimand that she faltered, for just a second, realizing how very disapproving he would be of this whole jaunt.

But Mira just snorted, muttered something rebellious-sounding under her breath, and shoved Olivia upwards, towards the beckoning beam of light arrowing downwards, and when they crested the top of the stairs it was so beautiful that they both froze, hands clasped; Olivia took a moment to blush and be surprised at how very natural that action had become to her. The bone-pale face of the clock rose before them like the moon, thin as parchment and all aglow with the lights of twilight Death City outside, and when they crept towards it, they could peer between the smoothly clicking gears to the world outside, to see the darkening sky pierced with stars. There were two tiny windows and the city spread out far below them, a tangled, glimmering tapestry. Far away, night birds were calling, sweet and soft.

"It's so pretty," Mira said quietly, and when Olivia turned to her, caught up on a wave of something like worship coming through their resonance, she had to catch her breath at the way the backwards moon-face of the clock lit up Mira. She _looked_ like a sword then, face upturned to the glow, all angles and symmetry and a small smile that was deadly in its pointed beauty, aimed right to the static in Olivia's chest.

"Are you all right?" Olivia said as their bond gave a great jump.

Mira plumped down on the floor very close to the mechanisms of the clock, dust whirling up around her, and put her palms to her mouth. "I wish Eimy could have seen this," she croaked, and even in the misty fairy-tale lighting, Olivia could see the tears brimming in Mira's starshine eyes.

"Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry," she said immediately, dropping to her knees beside her weapon. But after that, she couldn't say a thing, because the words that leapt to mind- Hey, she's dead now, dead people have never missed anything as far as I can tell, or: My father got angry once and told me once that if I failed and died on a mission he wouldn't cry for me- were from another dimension, the dark bloody one she'd been trying desperately to forget. She rubbed the inside of her elbow and glared uncomfortably at the shadow of the clock's ornate hands through the smooth ivory curve of the clock face, wishing she could do something, kill someone, anything at all, to stop the soft whimpers coming from Mira.

They sat there for a long time, side by side, in twin misery, and then Olivia felt Mira nudge up against her side. She didn't look, but with a sensation like leaping off a cliff, she inhaled and lifted an arm, and Mira tucked herself up neatly underneath it before sneezing wetly.

"Dust," she sniffled, wiping at her face.

"It's okay," Olivia lied, carefully squashing down the half-formed jealousy she felt blooming inside her whenever Mira said Eimy's name. After a while, though, it was mostly okay, and Mira's shoulders stopped heaving, and they sat together and watched the shadows of the clock's hands inch across the grimy floorboards. Then they tiptoed down the quivering stairs, through the basement, and out the doors, latching the bicycle chain and the padlock behind them carefully, just as it had been, untouched.

"See? No harm done," Mira said cheerfully, apparently uncaring that she was ferociously contradicting her earlier, hesitant self. Her eyes were still swollen, but her back was straight again and her head held high as they strolled through the streets. It took a long time to get back to the dorms, but that was all right, Olivia thought, because the air was crisp and bracing and watching the clock tower twitch towards midnight had been wickedly relaxing.

"You know, I still haven't seen you transform," she said to Mira, when they were crammed into the bushes under their dorm window.

Mira grinned. "It's overrated," she said modestly, but she struck a ridiculous pose, flexing both arms over her head, before dissolving into wavering, flickering edges, shrinking smaller and smaller with a flash of light.

Olivia caught her instinctively, well used to grabbing blades, and she thought she might cry from sheer joy, because in her palm, Mira was _alive_ like no other knife had been, warm and welcoming, fitting perfectly into her palm, serrated spine glinting wickedly in the moonlight, surreal shark's teeth. "Well?" Mira said after a moment, and Olivia nearly dropped her from shock; Mira's voice was so strange this way, echoing as if from a long way off. "We going up or not?"

"Yeah," Olivia said, shaking off her exultation, and then she took another quick glance around before clambering up. They were very lucky the wall had quite a bit of texture to provide finger and toe holds. It took a bit of maneuvering, mostly because she didn't have a sheathe and felt distinctly odd about putting Mira between her teeth, as she normally might in a situation like this, but finally, through a combination of gripping the drain pipe and digging her fingertips into crumbling spaces between the bricks of the wall, she made it to the window.

She elbowed it open and tumbled inside with a gasp, and with another fizzing burst of white light, Mira was human again, snorting airlessly on the floor beside her as the nighttime breeze gusted their curtains about. "Oh, that was so worth it!" she said, nearly cackling.

Olivia's face felt like it might shatter from the sheer force of her smile. "I'm glad you had fun," she said, nibbling on a fingertip, and when Mira looked over, her eyes were their deepest blue yet.

"Yeah, I did, thanks to you... Thanks," Mira told her after a second, rather hoarsely, and they both seemed to be frozen for a little while, until with an awkward sort of laugh, Mira looked away and got to her feet. "I suppose we should go to bed already, then," she said, and then she blinked and winced in an embarassed sort of way.

"I guess," Olivia agreed, though she didn't feel in the least sleepy. "Will you keep calling me Jen?"

"Huh?"

"I- uh, it's just, I sort of like it. Jennifer's too- long." Olivia was terribly afraid she was blushing, so she focusing ferociously on untying her boots.

"Sure," Mira said softly. "Jen it is."

A few minutes later, they were in their pajamas and tucked safely into their respective beds, lights off, although for Olivia at least, adventure and the night air were still burning in her bloodstream.

"It's cold," Mira said, very quietly, and a moment later, the bed shifted as Olivia's weapon slid in beside her.

* * *

White Star was burning up from the inside out. "There's no sun," he rasped to the crimson raven, tongue parched and thick in his mouth.

"There's sun, little boy, you just can't see it for all the shadows," the thing said, hopping up beside him where he lay and looking as if it would very much like to pluck his living eyes from his head.

White Star scowled with all the energy he had left, but the trees were spinning around him, and the sun he couldn't see was beating down with no mercy, which made focusing on the bird-thing rather difficult. "There's no north," he said. "I can't get out of here if there's no north."

"You'll die if you keep lying there." The raven sounded pleased.

Nettled, White Star wriggled upwards, enough so that he was at least sitting against a tree trunk, though the effort left him panting and dizzy. "Fuck it all. Fuck you. I'm dead anyway," he said contemplatively. The raven clacked its beak mournfully before bubbling momentarily into a raw, soupy mass of steaming yellow bile punctuated with floating bits of brain. Brains; White Star decided the thing must be feeling thoughtful, then.

"Wait," he muttered, turning his head to spit his thick, miserable, sulfurous saliva onto the ground. He worked his dry mouth for a moment then said, "How long have I been here?" Time was disappearing at an exponential rate. He had a deadline. He had to get back, back to the States, back to Midori and Blacktail and his mission, and make his brother and the Clan proud.

"A week or so. Those mushrooms you ate are disagreeing with you, aren't they, little boy? I told you. I did, I told you, but did you listen?"

"I'm starving," White Star moaned, trying for the hundredth time to figure out which way the shadows were pointing, but every time he tried to focus on them, they slid away and formed fearful shapes. Then, on a foolish whim, feeling his empty stomach contract and his beaten body burn and quiver, he said, "Help me."

"Help you? Help you?" The raven dissolved into vicious shrieks of laughter. "Help you! Help you! You think I'll help you! For what, little boy, what can you offer me? You're dying, you've given up already, this Clan you seem so proud of must be weaker than a fish on land if it made you, you think I'll _help_ you, oh, you're so funny!"

"If it's the last thing I do I'll rip you apart," White Star nearly screamed, reaching a wobbly hand towards the bird; it hopped nimbly backwards out of reach, overlong tongue stealing a swipe at his fingers.

"Taste like failure," it crowed, dancing from foot to foot, ruffling its feathers up proudly into a lion's mane around its mocking face.

"Fuck you!" White Star shouted. "Go to hell! I'll show you fucking failure!" Spots wavered in front of his vision, but he staggered upright, breath harsh in his lungs. "Fuck you," he repeated, more weakly. The blackened trees that he'd been cursing, so close together, were a relief now, always there for him to lean on as he dragged himself forward. He felt a thousand years old; he felt as weak as an infant. The scarlet raven flapped over to land heavily on his shoulder, and he hated it, but it would be a waste of precious energy to slap it away. Anyway, whatever it was, reincarnated soul or some more ancient evil, it didn't seem to really want to kill him itself.

"How long have I been here?" he said after a while, taking a moment to lean his forehead against scabrous bark.

"I don't speak that language," said the raven, claws pricking warningly through his tattered shirt.

"Oh." White Star realized he'd slipped into English. "Sorry. Shit. Uh-" In Japanese, he repeated his question.

The raven was silent for a while, as if pondering, but then at last it said, in the quietest tone White Star had yet heard, "I told you. Can't see the sun for the shadows. I haven't seen the sun itself in a long time, no I haven't. Don't know how long you've been wandering. Don't know how long I've been flying, I don't."

It actually sounded _sad_. This blasphemous atrocity on his shoulder, which was even now picking off stray feathers that morphed into dry, transparent flakes of skin as they fell, sounded sad. Sudden inspiration struck him, along with an echo of his brother's voice from long ago- "Little brother, if an enemy is foolish enough to reveal emotion to you, don't let it go unpunished, understand? Weakness deserves to be taught a painful lesson." If anything could be said to be the essence of Grey Star the Ghost, well, that was it right there.

White Star did understand, and furthermore, he would _not_ give in, would not die here. He cleared his throat, blinked his tired eyes, then said casually, giving into a lightheaded urge to ramble, "I like the sunshine. It's autumn outside this place, you know, like, the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold yet. All the trees are changing color." Fuck, but it was cold. The chains around his wrists were freezing. Hadn't it been warm when he'd been dropped here? Actually, hadn't he just been warm? It was like he had fallen into the spirit world, the one Shadow Star always talked about after a little too much sake. Nothing around him had a firm outline anymore. He clamped his jaw shut to keep his teeth from chattering. At least moving had heated his blood a little; small mercies in this hellish forest.

"Pretty, pretty," the raven said. Then, in a different sort of tone from what he'd heard from it so far, it added, "I remember a girl, under a flowering plum tree, pink petals everywhere, all over her, all in her hair."

Unexpectedly poetic, that, and unexpected in general, but a sign that that his ploy was working, and also perhaps that the thing had truly once been human. What a disturbing revelation. White Star became aware that he'd stopped moving and forced his blistered feet into motion once again, even as he knew that he was probably going in circles, probably going to keel over for the final time soon. "She sounds beautiful."

"I think she was," answered the raven, very still now, nestled close to his ear. "Dark hair and eyes like a deep well at midnight."

"So you like springtime, then," White Star said, after working his mouth to gain a little moisture. The raven said nothing. After a while, White Star told it, with a weird wrenching in his heart, one that he hadn't allowed to surface in years, "My brother cut down the only plum tree in my home. My mom planted it a long time ago, I guess. He said the petals made too much mess, falling everywhere. There are only, like, five left in the whole compound and they're just pines. In the sparring arena. Ugly, plain, you know? I like flowering trees."

"It's a sin to cut down a sakura," the raven hissed darkly. "You've fallen."

"Oh." He had. He was facedown in the grimy, gooey, blasted earth of Osorezan and he hadn't even realized. "I think I'm dying." Would Grey Star miss him? Would Seven bat an eye, or just sigh in resignation and continue clacking away on his keyboards? Would Jaune cry over him or just over the fact that she had no one to cook for her anymore? Midori would be sad, at least, but Midori had the biggest heart, and the weakest, of all the Clan together. Grey Star had said so many times. Summer, almost as soft as Midori, would mourn too, but she would do it in private, away from his brother's judging eyes.

The raven latched onto his ear with its thick, bony beak and gave a sharp tug, wings flapping, carrying their usual cloying scent of decay. "Quit," he muttered, shutting his eyes. It felt unspeakably wonderful. "I'm dying. Maybe I'll come back as a bird too. We really can bleed things out together, like you wanted."

The raven tugged harder, and now it was actually beginning to hurt, enough to pierce the darkness; when White Star cracked his eyes, it felt as if a full night had passed though he knew it had been only seconds, and he was vaguely surprised to see that it was still day. "Little boy, little boy! I want to hear more about the flowering trees! Tell me! Tell me now!" It was really hurting his ear now.

He felt, dimly, that he'd perhaps been working towards something with this conversation. After a while, he remembered through the fog, and he said, with some difficulty, "If I tell you all about the trees and the things outside here, will you help me escape?"

The raven let go of his ear, thank god, and hopped up onto his chest, those needle-sharp nails clawing at him. It turned its head to regard him with one glinting bloodred eye. "Not much of a deal, that," it said with menacing softness.

"All I've got to give," White Star rasped, immediately cursing himself for giving away his hand; his brother would not approve. His brother had taught him that victory was worthless if you didn't win by a mountain, if you didn't get double back in return for whatever you traded away, if your enemy didn't leave weeping and ground into bloody dust, never again to rise up in challenge.

"Take me with you," the raven whispered, now all writhing gelatinous flesh squirming on his chest. "Take me out of here, take me to see the trees."

"Can I even do that?" White Star shut his eyes again, and nothing in his entire life had ever felt so good. He knew he was lying down, but it felt like he was spinning slowly in place.

"Yes, yes, mmhmm, I think so, I do, I do, yes yes!" The raven's unusual speech patterns were getting more pronounced, along with its excitement; White Star could feel it prancing around atop him, could feel the breeze of its wings on his face. "Take me, take me!"

"Can you really get me out of here?" He thought for a moment, then added blearily, "Alive? In one piece?"

"Yes. Yes, I promise, swear it, I will! Say yes! Say yes! Can't leave on my own!" It sounded frantic now. A dark piece of White Star relished it.

"You first," he whispered. "Take an oath. Swear it on the girl with the midnight eyes." Victory was at hand, he could feel it; it tasted like blood.

The raven gave a final, nervous dance, then cawed, "Swear it, I swear it on the girl, I swear it!"

"I swear too," White Star said. God, but he was so, so tired. "Swear it on my family," he put in on honest impulse, before Osorezan's infernal ice crept into his veins and froze over his eyes.

* * *

He woke up to the entire earth moving, and even as he cursed the fact that he seemed to be waking up from atrociously weak and wussy blackouts all too often these days, he lurched upright, tearing open eyes crusted shut. "Wassahappenfuckyou_shit_," he grunted, lashing out at nothing even before he was fully vertical.

Then he stopped moving entirely, mouth gaping, and simply stared at back of the head of the massive red bear carrying him. Oddly enough, though, his clutching hands grasped feathers, not fur, and they felt rather slimy. "Ugly chicken?" he asked hesitantly after a moment. Perhaps he'd really died and this was hell.

The bear grunted and turned its head slightly, fixing a piggish mustard-colored eye on him. "Yes yes yes," it said, sounding very irritable. "Carrying you out. Do shut up, though, this isn't the way my body likes to be, it takes concentration!"

"Yes, okay, totally." White Star shut up after that and focused on gripping the bear's back with his thighs as it tilted back and forth with each stride. He felt better, but not much, and after the adrenaline of his sudden jolt back to consciousness wore off, he really needed to actively concentrate on being a good rider.

The bear, or bird, whatever the hell it was now, didn't sporadically turn into anything goopy and gross, which was a massive relief, but it seemed to be rumbling something under its breath as it trudged through the withered trees, paws squelching in the sucking soil. White Star twisted behind him one to look at its footprints; they were indistinct, smeared holes, and to his horror, red droplets welled up in them even as he stared. The chains on his wrists clanked with each stride of the bear, a prisoner's symphony, and slowly, it made him angry.

"You knew the way out the entire time?" he asked, a little bitterly.

The bear's grumbling grew louder, and White Star caught a few things- "bratty brat brat," and "so heavy," and then, "I swore, so stupid, I swore, should have _killed_ him-" before it told him, more distinctly, "Need to concentrate, little boy, shut your mouth! Or lose a few pounds! Get small or get quiet!"

"Fine, damn," he said, blinking at the back of its head. Then, deciding it might be prudent to stay on the good side of the monster currently bearing him back to the real world and wonderful life, he said, "Thanks," before falling silent.

"Long way to go, long way, little boy, so focus on breathing and let me keep going," said the bear-bird, feathers puffing up beneath his fingers as one small round ear flicked back at him.

"Okay. Okay, I will. Sorry." Privately he wondered if such an unnatural creation would even be able to leave the boundaries of Osorezan, the Gateway to Hell, but then again, right now the trees were watching him with bulging, gnarled eyes made of bark and moss and gleaming white wood, so he decided it would be wisest to pretend his head wasn't dizzy and just keeping hoping he'd make it out of this insanity alive. His stomach was still hollow, but he was in motion now, and even though he was pretty sure the deadline of ten days Grey Star had given him had passed, he might still survive. To be truthful, simple survival was looking like the best damn outcome of this whole fuckup.

That sobered him, cut through the blurriness inside his twanging skull. Osorezan was more than just a forest. This place was unholy, cursed, and his brother, who knew everything in the world and undoubtedly knew exactly what Osorezan was, had left him here, alone, chained and unarmed.

A strong piece of him was trying, very hard, to say that that wasn't something a good brother would do, not ever, and certainly not for something like a little unauthorized information gathering. The other part of him was shouting loudly that it was his big brother's right, the ultimate and all-encompassing privilege of the legendary leader of the Star Clan, to punish any which way he liked, and that White Star had lied and thus deserved it. Feeling rather sick again, he thought distantly about asking the bear-bird what it thought about the whole confusing mess, but before he could, it grunted, a little breathlessly, "You agreed, tell me stories. Tell me about the trees and the flowers and pretty girls and clear water, it's been so long, yes it has, tell me about the fresh breezes and the ocean, tell me tell me."

It sounded tired. After all, it was bodily hauling his useless carcass to safety, so White Star said, "Uh. Okay. Well, the place I live, it doesn't have many trees left, you know, but there's ivy. There's a mountain nearby, and that's got tons of trees, but not the compound. The ivy, though, it's all over. It's got those really shiny leaves, they look kind of waxy. It grows all up the compound walls, it covers everything and my brother leaves it because he says that if it's disturbed we'll know someone was trying to get in. Nature's cheap security system, he says. It's so thick that you'd have to be a ghost to climb it without leavin' sign."

"That's good, I remember ivy, green and pointy, windy twirly. Tell me more." The bird-bear's steps picked up a little.

Buoyed by the sight of the wicked trees passing by, White Star went on, more in earnest. "My brother- well, not _brother_ brother, you know, but he's Clan- Joab, uh, he's got a garden out back. The biggest freshest juiciest tomatoes you ever saw, every summer, and corn, and it grows so tall you can get lost in it. He grew pumpkins one year and they got so big I could have slept inside. And the fucking strawberries, oh my god!" He started drooling involuntarily, desperately, at the thought of food, and decided, when his stomach gave a wrenching cramp, that maybe he had better change the subject. "What else? Do you want to hear about, I mean."

The bear-bird hacked gruffly, stubby ears wriggling, then said, "People. Who are your people?"

White Star considered that for a little while, peering down at the pink, raw welts the cuffs of his chains had worn around his wrists. "My brother. He's- he's everything. He runs everything. He's so fucking smart, you wouldn't believe, people hardly even die anymore, and we're always safe. And he's strong, he can even take Midori out."

"And?" his ride growled, panting now.

"I can get off for a little bit-"

"And? And? And?"

"Shit, okay, okay. Um, Seven. Scarlet Star, but he hates his Clan name. He's a fucking junkie for technology, anything with wires and a screen, he's all over it. Jaune, Yellow Star, she's _always_ hungry but she's the littlest girl I've ever met, she's even smaller than Blacktail, and meaner than a kicked hornet's nest." Warming to his narrative, missing the things he spoke of suddenly and acutely, he went on, shaky fingers gripping greasy crimson feathers as he tried his best to dodge low-hanging branches. "Thorn's our poison guy, he can brew up shit that'll kill you with one breath, it's incredible. Bob does the interrogations- he's Dark Star, best fucking Clan name my brother ever gave- he does the finances, too." Here he frowned a little. "Bob's family but I tell you what, he creeps me right out. Looks right through you, you know? He's got these yellow eyes. Midori always says, never trust a man or a dog with yellow eyes."

The bear trudged on. After a long time, or perhaps only a few minutes, it stopped and put its nose to the ground, snuffling audibly. It changed course a little, veering to the right, and kept moving. "The Bob one likes blood, then, like you and me?"

"No," White Star blurted, squeezing his eyes shut. "No, not like- not like me!"

The bear growled laughter, shaking beneath him. "Sure sure, all right, little boy, not like you. Who's Midori? Sounds wise, yes he does. Lots of things in these wood have yellow eyes."

"Oh. Green Star. He's my trainer, sort of. I go on missions with him a lot. Softhearted bastard but he's damn good with just about any weapon you can name. He's really, really tall, and he's only got one eye. He won't tell anyone how he lost it. He's in the United States right now, I should be with him, actually. He's working with a foreign operative on an infiltration assignment. Blacktail."

"Oooh, a girl?" said the bear slyly. "Little boy got a little girlfriend?"

White Star wanted very badly to rip out a few feathers, but he gritted his teeth and desisted. "No, you- no! No way! She's this scrawny little psycho, and anyway she's half-" He bit his tongue. "She's different. Works for a different organization."

"What's she look like?" asked the bear, sounding very tired.

White Star thought about it, then said slowly, reluctantly,"Black hair and eyes like a well at midnight."

"_Oh_," said the bear. "Let's get you home then, let's get you home, I want to see her, can I see her?"

White Star laughed humorlessly. He was beginning to feel bad again, sick to his stomach from the endless scraping of the chemical smells against his throat, vaguely nauseous from the swaying of his ride. "If I can ever get her to join the Clan, I guess. Or- shit. Are you gonna be following me around when we get out of here? Can everyone else see you?"

"I can hide, if I can see the girl, I'll hide, promise!"

"Hell, I guess you can tag along then, when I go back to Midori. You can meet her then. She's sort of pretty when she's not glaring at me. And she saved my life once. Sort of." His head was drooping forward onto the unpleasant, sticky feathers between the bear's shoulderblades, but he allowed it, eyelids impossibly heavy. "I feel sort of bad for her. People think all kinds of bad things about her just because of her blood. I get it, you know? I walk through town and people cross the steet, people I've never done a fucking thing to."

"Sleep, sleep, tell me more later, be a long walk, little boy," said the bear, paws slurping through an especially thick patch of mud. White Star sighed, snorted the smell of carrion and decay out from his nose, and obeyed.


	9. Chapter 9

Mira's new habit of sneaking into Olivia's bed made life rather difficult. It wasn't that Olivia didn't like it; she _did_, but waking up to the near, delightful warmth of her weapon seemed to turn her brain to scrambled eggs for the rest of the day, which had a negative effect on her efforts to prepare for midterms. Nonetheless, she drew on Jennifer Mason's stoic studiousness, buckled down, and managed to at least pass everything, though afterwards she honestly couldn't have said how she'd done it. She and Mira waited nervously for the final test grades to be posted, and they were both so relieved when they saw they hadn't failed anything, they broke into spontaneous dancing right in the middle of the hallway, and then went out for ice cream. Mira got strawberry, and Olivia got the least sweet-sounding kind she could find on the menu, espresso. In the end, she couldn't even finish half, and she gave the rest to Mira, who wolfed it down happily.

So Mira liked sweet things, but over the next few weeks, Olivia discovered other things about her partner, and the discoveries were so bright and lovely that for a while, Olivia had to look away when Mira came into the room. Her weapon was simply too much to look at- too much of something, overwhelming, too sugary and sweet to take in all at once. Nonetheless, the new thing between them meant Olivia paid a little closer attention, and she was very glad when midterms were over, because her mind was a thousand miles away from anything at all, really. She even managed to push away little blonde Joe Buttataki and room 46X, at least most of the time.

Olivia found out that as a knife, Mira never needed to be sharpened, but as a person she still avoided the eyes of other students when they whispered behind their hands about dead Eimy. She learned that Mira had gotten in her very first fight in first grade, when another little girl wouldn't stop calling her 'Mirabelle', that her favorite color was orange, that she was a cat person, and that she had a big brother who was seven years older. She found that bandages could be stolen in bulk from the school medical wing whenever Miss Yumi was busy at the library, and she and Mira spent an entire lunch period one day rushing back and forth between their dorm room and the medical supplies closet, giggling and red-faced as they spirited mass quantities of bandages away.

Two days after that, Mira introduced her to the extracurricular sparring seminars Mr. Marquis and Ms. Tetra, the Literature and Physical Education professor, held every Tuesday and Friday night in the big gym. Besides the noises Mira made when she dreamed, this was possibly Olivia's favorite discovery; the third time they went, she managed to get partnered with Denny, and she strutted away at the end of the lesson to the tune of him attempting to breathe through a broken nose.

That night, Olivia locked the door to her bathroom, turned on the shower, and assembled her communication device, grinning the whole while. When Midori said into her ear, "Heya, kiddo," he must have heard her euphoria in her answering greeting, because he immediately followed up with, "You kill someone? What the fuck's goin' on?"

"Nothing," she said reprovingly, before an attack of the giggles struck. "Nothing," she said once she calmed, a little more straight faced. "Got let into the catacombs finally," she added, to distract him. She didn't tell him that the catacombs debacle had actually been almost two weeks ago; she'd waited, far preferring to report stasis rather than outright failure to her father.

It worked. "Oh, shit, really? Goddamn, good job! What happened?"

She told him all about it, and when she was finished, he let out a rumbling sigh. She could hear him sharpening something in the background, a steady, irate rasping. "The blond fucker sounds like bad news. That's all he said, though? Nothin' concrete, he just insinuated?"

"Yeah. I could tell, though. He knows something."

"Well, shit, trust your gut, that's what I always say. Intuition's kept my ass in one piece more'n once. " He hummed a little, thinking. "Seems to me like if Lord Death had an idea you were a spy, though, he'd have sent a teacher down there, someone more experienced, not a little kid, you know? If this Joe boy's got any suspicions about you, I'm pretty certain he's kept them to himself."

Olivia pondered that, swirling her hand through the saturated air as the shower fogged up the bathroom, forming the dampness into little cloudy shapes. She concentrated, made a bird, and watched it flap its misty wings twice before dissolving away. "Makes sense. But I keep noticing him lately- he showed up when Mira and I were getting coffee the other day. He's following me and he doesn't care if I know it." Anger was heavy in her chest. The one time she'd tried to sneak down to the catacombs, he'd showed up, mild grin firmly in place, and steered her away with some nonsense about Miss Yumi needing help. She'd been foiled, neatly and inarguably, and it rankled, mostly because of the limitations being undercover placed on all the painful things she sort of wanted to do to his loud, plan-ruining mouth.

Midori's voice was tense. "Shit. Fuck. That's no good. I can take him out, if you want. Won't be a problem."

She opened her mouth to say, yes, yes _please_ get rid of the annoying little gnat who'd been being such a stressful bother, but then the tight, vicious tone of Midori's words registered. The Midori she knew would never, ever volunteer to murder a thirteen-year-old boy who hadn't absolutely, one hundred percent, made her for a spy. "What's wrong?" she said immediately, throat tightening, and his long silence only made her fear grow.

"Nova," he grunted at last. "He's missing, and his brother won't fucking tell me what's going on, but it's been two weeks now and- he's missing, in Japan somewhere."

"Oh, god," she breathed, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. Around her, the warm mist crackled into ragged spikes. "Oh, god."

"Yeah." Midori sounded broken, bitter, and it hurt to hear. "His brother did something, I know it. Doubt he killed him but I'd fuckin' lay money that White Star's not having a good time right now."

"Do you think he'll be okay?" she whispered.

Midori sighed audibly, and the noise of a blade being sharpened stopped. "I hope so, girlie. I really hope so. But don't worry about that, okay? Focus on your mission. You gotta figure out a way to get that Joe kid off your back."

"I will," she promised, gnawing on her index finger. "I'll figure something out."

"Good girl. Stay safe, all right? I'll tell Cascadia we've gotten entry into the storage rooms, your dad'll be pleased. You got the password now, you're as good as gold, just gotta find time to slip in there."

"Yeah," she muttered, a blatant lie if she'd ever heard one. If she were honest with herself, she'd done a shit job so far on this mission. "Hope so."

"Talk to you in a few days?"

"Yeah. Three. You're not getting too bored down in that leaky old basement, are you?" She was trying for levity, but it fell flat.

Nonetheless, Midori chuckled. "Nah, not too bad. Cute little widow woman few towns over been keepin' me company at night. Cooks some pretty good grub, too, she's been fattenin' me up."

"Oh my god," she hissed, feeling her face flame up.

"Sorry! Sorry. Too much information, right?" Midori didn't actually sound sorry in the least, but at least he'd said the words. "Anyhow. Nah, I been stayin' busy, don't worry about me, there's always work to be done."

"Ugh, fine. Don't blow our cover!"

"Wasn't born yesterday," he said, sounding mildly displeased. "Talk to you in a bit, then, keep your head down. Good work so far."

"Thanks." The call ended with a click and a burst of static, and she leaned her head back against the bathroom wall, perturbed. What awful kind of brother did Nova have, if Midori could accuse the man of such things and sound so convinced? But she couldn't do anything, couldn't go jetting off to Japan to try and rescue Nova; honestly, as bad as it made her feel, she wasn't totally sure she would if she could. If she did, anyway, it would only be to make Midori feel better. It hurt, though, knowing that Midori was stuck here because of her, unable to rescue the boy he saw as a son.

Then, out of the blue, inspiration struck. She opened up the frequency again, and thank god Midori still had his radio on. "What now?" he said , a tad grumpily, when she called his name.

"Can you make contact with Mr. Deering for me? I've got a proposition." Her head was pounding; she focused on the water pouring from the shower to drown out her overloud heartbeat.

"A proposition? Kid, from what you tell me I doubt Cascadia's in the habit of makin' deals with their operatives-"

"Just, listen, I'll write a letter to him. I'll put it in the wall, our usual spot. Pick it up tomorrow night. Okay? Please? It'll be from me so you can't get in trouble, they'll just assume you thought it was standard intelligence-" She was talking so fast now that she was tripping over her own tongue, and the foggy spikes were longer and sharper.

"All right, okay, calm down." Midori sounded deeply disturbed, and she was fairly sure he was pacing.

"I _miss_ you," she blurted through the hand over her mouth, suddenly and deeply fearful. For what she was about to do, her father might well take drastic action, and when Mr. Deering was displeased, there was always carnage.

"Oh, shit," Midori grumbled. "Yeah, uh, I miss you too. Can you stop with the waterworks and tell me what the fuck you're up to now?"

She grinned weakly. "No time. Just trust me. And it's probably better if you really don't know, anyway, because-"

"Because your fuckup daddy's got a temper," he said shortly, and now it was obvious he was fully pissed off. "What the goddamn nine hells are you doing? Seriously, if you've got somethin' moronic up your fucking sleeve you'd best tell me right now and let me help-"

"Gotta go, Midori, stay safe," she breathed brokenly before pulling the batteries from her transmitter. She didn't have the energy to rush through her usual hyperspeed shower; instead she stripped, got into the water, and then immediately got out once she was drenched, just in case Mira was awake still when she left the bathroom. Toweling off, Olivia ran a hand absently through her soaking hair, pulled it away and then could only stare in surprise; her hair fell around her face, nearly dry, and pulsing around her spread fingers was a perfect bubble of water.

"That's new," she said to no one, letting the clinging water fall from her hand into the sink. When she got into her bed, Mira was already there, sleepy and warm.

"Halloween this weekend," Mira murmured indistinctly, once Olivia had settled in beside her. "Trick or treating with me, right?"

"Sure," Olivia said, and she was very proud when her voice didn't crack. She lay awake for a very long time, planning out her next step. Two months she'd been here, and already she knew she'd fight tooth and nail to stay. Honestly, right now, listening to her weapon breathe, she never wanted to move.

* * *

"Oh, lookie," said the bird-bear, almost reverently.

White Star blinked out of his grey half-daze and looked up, only just missing getting whapped in the face by a branch with wickedly long, black-tipped thorns. "What?"

The bear came to a stop, blocky head lifted. "Look," it said again.

White Star did so, and his breath caught in his lungs. "Another person-" He was halfway off the bear before it gave a gruff snarl.

"No, don't, she isn't what you think, little boy, just watch!"

"Oh." Feeling rather foolish, White Star hauled himself back atop the bear, forcing his shaky limbs into action with a rattle of chains. Of course there wouldn't be a beautiful woman in a kimono the color of starlight wandering around in these monstrous woods. Of course she wasn't what she looked like. He watched her move through the trees, slowly, and it took a moment for him to realize that the silvery glints in her bound hair weren't traditional hair ornaments, but the thinnest and daintiest of daggers, bristling out from within her thick dark locks.

"I could seriously use a blade right now," he muttered contemplatively, but the bear snarled again, so White Star didn't move.

The woman kept walking placidly, moving away from them, and when she was out of sight, White Star suddenly realized he'd never seen her face; the thought sent such a wave of irrational relief over him that he said, a little nervously, to the bear, "What was that?"

The bear grunted. "When she walks, there's nothing to fear. It's when she dances that you've got to worry. Hang on now, hang on." It moved on, angling a little away from the direction the woman in the white kimono had gone. White Star sighed and pressed his chained arms around his stomach as it gave a particularly vicious growl.

"I'm starving," he said quietly, for possibly the thousandth time in his life, but now it wasn't said because dinner was late, or because he was craving a snack, or because he'd skipped breakfast. He was starving, in the truest sense of the word, flesh withering off his body and thoughts dying half-formed in his brain. "How much farther?"

"Don't know. Never done this, you know," said the bear, sounding rather amused. White Star cracked.

"Fuck! Fucking shit, this isn't funny! Do you know how long I've been in here? It's been way over my fucking deadline, even if I make it out alive my brother's going to fucking murder me- fuck!" Shouting done, he slumped forward, panting. It appeared throwing a screaming tantrum was much more taxing after being trapped in the woods with no food and little water for god knews how long. After the mushroom debacle, he hadn't dared eat anything, and licking sour dew off suspiciously withered leaves wasn't all that hydrating. Anyway, every time he put something from Osorezan in his mouth, he was more than half afraid he'd instantly keel over for good.

"Shut up, shut up," hissed the bear, sounding more bird-like then it had in a while. "Shut up! Why don't you ring the dinner bell for the whole forest!"

"You just had to fucking mention dinner," White Star groaned in abject misery, dodging another barbed branch.

* * *

With her note to her father safely tucked into the designated crevice, in the wall of the building on the outskirts of town where Midori knew to look, Olivia turned and headed back out to the main streets. Her steps were slow, her feet thousand-pound weights, and not even the cheerful grinning moon above her could lighten her trepidation.

She was so rattled, so terrified by the thought of the words that wall held now, so consumed by imagining her father's face twisted in rage as he read them, that she almost didn't notice Joe Buttataki's golden head until he bumped into her.

"Oh, hey, sorry, Jennifer," he said, smiling widely, glancing over her shoulder in the direction she'd just come from.

Her feet stuttered to a stop, along with her breath, and he paused too, seemingly content to keep smiling at her, steam rising up from the cardboard mug of Deathbucks coffee in his hand. This was bad, very bad. "Uh- going somewhere?" she managed, staring at that steam, feeling numb all over.

"Just out for a walk," he said genially. "What are you up to? Long way from school, aren't you?"

She put her fists into the pockets of her jacket to hide their trembling. "I suppose," she said, and perhaps he saw death in her eyes, because he leaned back, just a touch, smile slipping. Did she have a choice? She railed, fought it, but all her logic and training said that her only option was to get rid of him, and the knowledge was sickening. She couldn't simply walk back and retrieve her missive from the crack in the wall; he'd follow as long as he had breath in his suspicious little body, he'd already proven that by dogging her heels over the past few weeks. She couldn't simply walk away. He'd seen where she'd come from, and he would go there, search, and find evidence that would get her cover blown and break Mira's heart. No choice was a good one, but to kill someone, here, within the very boundaries of the city of a god- that was asking for trouble. She gritted her teeth, frantic.

"You look a little pale," he said sweetly, all teeth. It seemed he was looking right through her with those razor-sharp eyes. "Are you sure you're all right?"

She wasn't. She was frozen from the inside out. She wasn't even sure her blood was flowing anymore. Probably it was just nasty red slush, as cold as her awful soul. Anything she did, any choice she made, would ruin the hope she'd just risked everything for, the freedom to stay with Mira. There was no way out of this, no escape. "You seem to be popping up a lot lately wherever I happen to be," she whispered, and this time she couldn't hide the rage.

He took a sip of his coffee and sighed gustily. What lie would he tell this time? She was almost curious. "Maybe I've got a little crush on you."

Now that was so supremely stupid that Olivia almost choked on her humorless laugh. "You can't bullshit a bullshitter," she hissed, in the voice of the thing that lived in her mirror. His eyes widened, and finally that sickening-sweet smile faded. "What exactly has got you so curious about me?" She stepped closer, glad no one was out on the streets at this time in the evening, glad that they were in a rougher part of town- as rough as Death City got, anyway. Her face was doing something, writhing, she could feel it, but she couldn't stop it anymore than she could stop the frantic sizzle burning in her chest. She didn't think she'd ever felt anger this hot, not even when she'd learned her father had known all along she was a witch. All she wanted was a chance, she only wanted to be let alone to _try_ and escape her father's iron grip, but no, this stupid boy couldn't even give her that, she was never given the slightest leeway, never any mercy, never any choices of her own- she bit her lip, hard, and tasted copper. The insides of her elbows began to ache.

"I- is it so wrong to be curious about a pretty girl?" Joe said, taking another step backward.

"You don't give up, do you?" she said, and now it was her father's voice torn from her lips, cruel and devious. "That's a mistake. Walk away right now and I won't have to teach you a lesson about how monumentally stupid it is to follow me around." Her skin was cold, but she felt as if she could breathe fire, torch him to a crisp.

Joe gave up all pretense. His blue eyes were slit and blazing as he growled, "I know you're up to something! You're not what you seem, your soul looks wrong, everything from your mouth is a lie, and I have no idea how you got past Lord Death but I _will _find proof and I will protect the Academy from you!"

So he could see souls, then, like that disturbing grey-haired boy from Luma's resonance class. God, if it was that common of an ability, shouldn't Cascadia have known, and been able to warn her? So much for all her father's preparations. Olivia's laugh was high and creaking, like snapping bones. "Protect the Academy? From me? God, all I want is to stay here!" That was too much truth, but she was wild right now.

He paused, gaze flashing from side to side, and actually looked confused, empty coffee cup falling quietly to the sidewalk. "If you want to stay then why are you and your weapon sneaking around at all hours of the night? Why are you holding back in sparring class? And why were you trying to get back into the library storage? I heard what Frank said about your soul, he said you're different, and he's right, and the more I watch you the more-"

"You followed Mira and I?" she spat, rage multiplying. A streetlamp overhead flickered, and suddenly white frost was creeping over the wall behind Joe.

He looked beyond nervous, jaw muscles clenching, but he stood firm. "I did. To the clock tower. But- you guys want to stay? Look, if something's wrong, if someone's blackmailing you, go to Lord Death, he'll understand, he'll help you!"

"Let's get one thing straight," the devil possessing her tongue said as Joe's lips turned blue. "Mira has nothing to do with anything, anything at all, and if you threaten her again I will tear you apart."

"I didn't threaten her-" he started, but it was misdirection, because then he had dodged her instinctual grab and was pelting towards the beat-up building whose walls held her secret.

She shrieked wordlessly, desperate, tearing after him, able only to picture Mira's surprised, betrayed tears when she learned what foul sort of thing Jennifer Mason really was, but then he ground to a stop just as his outstretched hand brushed the wall holding her message.

He stayed motionless, gracefully posed mid-step, a dancer in stasis. He was glacially blue, and his bulging eyes were frosted over, hoary snow tipping his lashes. Icicles hung from his reaching fingertips. Around him, the sidewalk, which everywhere else in the city was damp and dark with the autumn rain of last night, was as bone dry as it would be in high summer. Olivia blinked in shock, let out a broken breath, and then the ripples in her chest gave a great heave, so strong that she fell to her knees, head ringing ferociously. Everything changed around her as she gasped. She could hear his stuttering heartbeat, could see every grain of dirt in the street, could feel every cloud in the sky, and when she looked down, her hands were black claws.

"Oh, oh no, oh no, oh," she whimpered. "What- oh no, oh no." She collapsed to the ground next to Joe's motionless body, gritting her teeth, still trying ferociously to breathe through her panic, trying to look away from the iridescent scales she saw slicking her wrists when her sleeves rode up.

But then she raised her head, startled almost out of her fear, because the heartbeat next to her was slowing. She squinted up at his face and realized, with dawning dismay, that he wasn't only frozen still- he couldn't breathe. Water was rippling steadily from his mouth down his chin, bubbling from his nose. She was drowning him, somehow, as surely as if she'd thrown him into the ocean.

And really, if she waited, if she turned her head away for another thirty seconds, then her secret would be safe and she and Mira might have a chance, assuming Olivia's plan worked- and that in itself was a long shot, but still. A drowning victim perishing on dry land, surely, would draw attention, but she would lay money Joe hadn't told anyone about his suspicions, and she knew for a fact no one else had followed her here. There would be no witnesses, no evidence to lead back to the perfectly normal Jennifer Mason, just a waterlogged boy lying alone in the darkness.

She sobbed once, breathlessly, into the inky sharpness of her witch's hands, and then she pulled on the magic inside her, and Joe thawed, falling bonelessly into a shivering, grunting, choking heap, sputtering dark water from his nose and mouth. "I'm sorry," she whispered, unable to move, incapable of either comforting him or running, not even sure which she wanted to do.

"Witch," he sputtered, gasping, clutching his throat, snorting out pink foam. "Witch. Witch."

Was he calling for help or just accusing? Either way, his words branded her, and when he managed to look up, the startled terror on his face hurt even worse. "I'm sorry," she whimpered again.

He rolled onto his knees, spat up the last of her murderous magic, and turned those sharp scared eyes on her again. "You're a witch," he coughed. "A witch, god, why didn't I see it? Jennifer, I'm so sorry, I'm the one who's sorry-" He flopped uncaringly onto his back, in the puddle of the ice that had melted from his skin, chest rising and falling; Olivia couldn't seem to look away from it.

"Uh- but- why?" she whispered, dumbstruck. "I almost just _killed _you."

He coughed again, wetly, wiping a shaky hand across his mouth. "No, no, you're just trying to survive, aren't you? We kill your kind over and over, no wonder you'd be scared to tell everyone what you are, shit, I'd be terrified if I was you. I get it. I really do." His face went a little grim and a little paler, impossible though that seemed. "We've all got secrets here."

"Oh." She took a deep breath, and to her massive relief, saw her hands change back to normal, right in front of her eyes, with a tingly sort of sensation not unlike a sleeping limb regaining circulation. This was luck like she'd never imagined, this foolish boy must have a heart bigger than Texas, and he'd thrown the perfect lie right into her lap. "You're not- witches are the enemy of the Academy. You hunt us. Everyone hunts us. Nobody trusts us, why- why aren't you going to turn me over to Lord Death?"

Joe scrubbed a hand through his hair, grimacing. "I never said that, did I?"

She tensed, and for a long moment, they just stared at each other. Finally he stood up, jerkily, coughing all the while, and motioned for her to do the same. "You're going to have to prove to me that you're not a danger to the Academy, the students, but if you pass my test I'll keep your secret." Then he frowned, and added, "On one condition."

"Sounds like two conditions," she said irritably, feeling mixed-up and nauseous and very much wanting to get back to Mira.

Joe just waved a hand dismissively. "Condition one, you pass my test. Condition two, you work on your witch's magic, learn it better."

Olivia gaped at him, then said suspiciously, "Why would you want me to be stronger?"

The look he gave her, even half-drowned and hurting, made her doubt her intelligence. "We wouldn't be enemies, stupid. I don't want you running around uncontrollably, hurting people if you get scared."

She flinched a little, guiltily, then nodded. Hope lit a gentle flame within her breast. If he would just leave her alone- if her father would only give in- she pictured herself wielding Mira, killing only those who deserved it, only spilling evil blood, keeping her own safe within her veins, and it was so sweet that tears came to her eyes. "Okay. Okay, uh, I'll do it. I promise. I'll work really hard."

She held out a hand to Joe, intending to shake on their deal, the way Midori always did, but Joe didn't move. "Test time. Answer the questions, and we'll see," he said quietly. He reached out, carefully, watching her warily, and settled a surprisingly steady fist against her collarbone.

She felt nothing but the cold touch of his knuckles, but from the way he closed his eyes, frowning, it seemed he was concentrating very hard. "Are you here to cause harm to Lord Death?" he said.

"No," she answered immediately, without the slightest hesitation. Whatever he was doing, it was obviously soul-related, and she had to make absolutely certain that she believed what she was saying, to keep her soul clear and true. Anyway, she _wasn't_ here to hurt Lord Death. If Cascadia had all the secrets to human weapons, well, that might even help him; more students for his little Academy.

"Mm." Joe's face didn't so much as flicker; she couldn't tell if she'd passed or not. "Are you a spy for the witches?"

Thank goodness he'd added that last bit, or she might have been in trouble again. Her tongue was dry as she said, "No, I'm not."

"Do you intend to hurt any of the students, faculty, or civilian residents of Death City, human or otherwise?"

Well, he certainly was thorough. "No," she said again. That wasn't her mission here- it certainly wasn't out of the question, but this wasn't an assassination. Murder wasn't her purpose, for once, thank god.

"If I keep your secret, am I going to regret it?"

"That's subjective, isn't it?" she tried.

He cracked one eye for a moment and sent her a bit of a glare. "Answer the question."

She made a face, though he couldn't see it. Would he regret it? Well, if her plan worked, then she'd become her cover for real, simply a student at the Academy, Mira Nygus' meister, who didn't kill the innocent, and why on earth would he regret that? The other option, though- if her father declined her deal, and forced her to complete her original mission- no. She was too good. She was so good that Joe would never find out she'd stolen the Academy's secrets, and thus, would never live to regret his actions tonight. She repeated that to herself a few times, focused on it like a laser, then said stoutly, "No. You won't. I promise."

For several heartbeats, he didn't move, just stood there with his fist pressed to her chest, and she watched and waited, hoping against hope. At last, he opened his eyes and withdrew his hand. "All right, then," he said cheerfully, flashing her a bright grin. "We're good. My lips are sealed."

He turned on his heel and walked away, hands shoved into his pockets, humming a little song. Olivia was so shellshocked that he was half a block away before she came to her senses and dashed after him. "Joe! Joe, wait! Wait up!" He paused, looking over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow as she came dashing after him. "That's it?" she asked once she'd reached him. "That can't be it. That's seriously it?"

He shrugged and kept walking. She tagged along, feeling very strange. For a while now, it had been him following her around, but now the tables were turned. "That's it," he said thoughtfully. "If you were lying, I'd have known. But as it is, I've got no reason to turn you in. I've got nothing against witches."

"Everyone has something against witches," she said before she could stop herself. The things she'd heard said about them since coming to this school were more vicious than any threats she'd ever heard in her years as an agent.

He snorted. "Not me. You can't generalize an entire race. Maybe the majority are bad, but I just looked into your soul, Jennifer Mason, and it's as clear as a spring day. You're one of the good ones, and I won't punish you for your parentage. Wouldn't be right."

Her throat grew suddenly tight. But they walked back to the school in silence, and he didn't ask her what she'd been doing in the alley on the far side of town, and she didn't ask him how terrible it was to always know when you were being lied to. When they reached the tall steps of the Academy, gleaming ivory and golden like a stairway to heaven, they parted, but before leaving, he asked, "You know you were all lit up? Every color of the rainbow. From your skin. It was beautiful. What kind of witch are you?"

Olivia could only shake her head uncomfortably, reminded of the wicked inky talons her hands had changed to. "Um- I didn't see any light. Are you sure?"

He looked contemplative. "Definitely sure." Turning to go, he threw wryly over his shoulder, "Maybe you just can't see your own light."

* * *

Halloween was apparently this biggest holiday of the year in Death City, which made a certain sort of sense, but Olivia found she wasn't all that fond of it. She tolerated Mira's rather hyper preparations with only a minimum of eye-rolling, and even stole some of Mira's bandages to dress up as a mummy, but beyond that, she really didn't see the appeal.

"Candy, duh," Mira said snappishly when Olivia asked yet again what all the fuss was about.

"You know I don't have a sweet tooth."

"Oh, yeah. That's so unnatural. You're a dork, you know that?" She said it affectionately, though. "Well, it's fun to dress up." Mira gave a little twirl to illustrate her point. She was wearing a snappy pinstriped suit that she'd picked up at a goodwill somewhere and had a plastic mask over the bottom half of her face.

Secretly Olivia thought she looked rather cute in that suit, but she said anyway, "Tell me what you're supposed to be again?"

Mira looked disgruntled and began fidgeting with her hair yet again. "I'm Hannibal! Silence of the Lambs?"

"A cannibal. You're excited because you get to pretend to be a cannibal. Someone who kills and eats people." Olivia was getting worked up over nothing, she knew it, but she couldn't quite put her bad feelings about such a seemingly innocent holiday into words. Perhaps it was simply the idea that her Mira would be so joyful over pretending to be a cold-blooded killer, that Mira thought the idea was _fun_. If Mira'd known what it felt like to slit a sinless woman's throat she wouldn't be so into this stupid holiday.

"Yes," Mira said firmly, looking mildly irritated at Olivia's deliberate obstinacy. She snatched a pillow from her bed and peeled off the pillowcase. "Here."

Olivia only just caught the thing. "Um- what?"

"For candy." Mira reached for another pillow and harvested her own pillowcase before herding Olivia out the door into a hallway packed with giggling, gory girls.

"I don't want any candy," Olivia said in absolute frustration, cringing away from someone who had fake blood spattered all across a white nurses' uniform. This felt like all her bad dreams come to life. A frazzle-haired Madonna in an overlarge wedding dress bumped into her and she only just managed to keep from shouting.

"Yeah, I was planning on eating all yours, too, don't worry." Mira said it with such a devilish grin that Olivia sighed and gave up. Obviously this Halloween thing was some sort of national obsession, and being right in the god of Death's backyard wasn't calming anyone down. They headed out, pillowcases in hand, and Olivia didn't ever think she'd felt as awkward as she did knocking on strangers' doors and asking for a handout.

Mira loved it, though. She would knock, wait with bated breath, then screech, "Trick or treat!" like a banshee as soon as the door opened.

By the time their pillowcases were half-full, Olivia would have welcomed the chance to throw someone down a mountain. Her feet hurt from pounding the pavement, she was sick and tired of seeing people dressed up as dead people, and all in all, she didn't think it was funny in the least. This place was supposed to be an escape for her, a way to forget all the terrible things she'd done, but no, the entire population of the city just had to dress up and remind her. For a little while, following Mira miserably, Olivia was able to amuse herself by spotting fake wounds on other trick-or-treaters that matched injuries she'd given to people in real life, but it wore thin quickly. The memories were too vivid, too bright still, even though she'd sort of hoped they'd have faded a bit.

"Mira, aren't we done yet? You can't possibly eat all this," she said complainingly after the next house.

Mira groaned through her mask, sounding rather like a cow with an upset stomach. "What? We haven't even hit the rich part of town yet! They give out whole candy bars over there! You can't be tired yet, we stay up this late all the time!"

"Fine," Olivia grunted. "Let's get it over with."

Mira frowned a little, peering at her as she shifted her overloaded pillowcase to the other shoulder. "I can't believe you don't like trick-or-treating. I really didn't mean to drag you along. You don't have to come if you really don't want to." She sounded as if she meant quite the opposite, though, and a little wave of annoyance came over their link.

Olivia scowled at the ground, taking a deep breath to keep from snapping. She was far too on edge, waiting for Midori to ferry over her father's reply, waiting for her entire future to be decided, hoping and praying all alone, and the stress of it was playing havoc with her emotions. She felt like she might burst, but she forced it down and said tightly, "I gave it a go, all right? I tried it. It's not fun, I'm sorry. I'm just going to go, um, do some homework or something. Have fun."

She turned to go, but Mira caught at her shoulder, concern and something else fluttering through the resonance; Olivia, feeling petulant, halfway considered breaking it, just to be obnoxious. Then Mira said incredulously, "Are you telling me you've never been trick-or-treating before? Like, your parents never took you? Not even once?"

Olivia stared intently at the shadowy ground, rather glad she was wearing her mummy bandages, because she could feel shame painting her face bright and hot. Maybe she was stupid to think she could ever fit in here, could ever be normal. Her father would laugh and laugh at the idea- in fact, he probably was, right this instant, dying of mirth with his nasty secretary as they read her idiotic attempt at escape. "No. They didn't. They were busy, okay?" She wrenched her shoulder free and stalked off, feeling Mira's too-strong worry fluttering around her, but it faded after a while. Every carefree group of laughing students she passed needled at her more, until she was literally stomping.

Halfway back to the school, a boy in tattered clothes with blood splashed all over him bumped into her, and before she knew it, she boiled over and was shrieking in his face. "Your costume is so stupid! It's stupid! Do you know what would happen if you were really hurt like that? That, right there, that's your femoral artery, you'd bleed out in three minutes! A gunshot there, you'd have a collapsed lung, you'd drown in your own damn blood from the inside out, do you think that's funny? Do you?"

The boy was white-faced, eyes huge as he stared at her, and abruptly she snapped her jaw shut and strode off in the opposite direction. It took a very long time to get herself under control, and the best she could do, eventually, was to stop grinding her teeth and clenching her fists. When she finally got back to the dorms, she threw Mira's candy onto the floor with unnecessary force and stood under the shower for a while, making the hot water into little butterflies and hummingbirds and delicate daggers that swooped all around her in a liquid ballet.

She was wrapped in her towel, combing out her hair in front of the mirror, still feeling a bit put-out, when Mira burst through the door. "I didn't think you'd actually leave, you jerk," she spat without preamble, peeling her cannibal mask over her head, but as Olivia opened her mouth to shout something back, Mira's eyes moved over her shoulder, to the mirror.

"What's that," Mira whispered, gone limp and terrible, all the blue drained from her eyes.

Olivia turned, and there in the steamy bathroom mirror was Nova, gaunt and red-eyed, with a thousand pinprick fangs bared in a monstrous grin, holding something pulsing and scarlet in one hand. It came from nowhere, born of fearful incentive, but Olivia would be forever ashamed of the lie that dropped so smoothly from her traitor lips. "What's what?" she said, in perfect confusion. "What are you talking about?"

Mira raised a shaking finger. In the mirror, Nova copied her, and then he began to laugh, silently but clearly. "Mira?" Olivia said, hearing herself as if from a very long way away. "Mira? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."


	10. Chapter 10

"So you fainted. It's not that big of a deal."

"I know what I saw! I didn't just faint for no reason! There was a boy in your mirror!"

"Mira, that's not- I looked, I didn't see anything, I was looking right when you were."

"Whatever." Mira turned away, putting her back to Olivia, who took the opportunity to hate herself enthusiastically for a moment before reaching across the bed to put a hand gently on Mira's elbow. She missed in the darkness and hit her hip, but Mira didn't seem to mind, so Olivia just left it there.

"It was Halloween," Olivia said, trying to sound encouraging. "Maybe something was there. It's a spooky night, right? And we work for a shinigami, so it's not as if crazy stuff doesn't happen here. Just try to-"

"If you tell me to forget it one more time I'm going to scream," Mira said warningly. "He was looking right at you, Jen, and he looked pissed. I'm not making this up!"

Olivia sighed and retracted her hand regretfully, turning onto her back for better ceiling-staring purposes. "Sure, okay, I believe you."

Maria would be proud. Olivia had put just the right amount of bemused skepticism into her voice to make Mira fling the covers back and dive into her own bed with a furious snarl. Olivia lay there, alone and cold, and in a small part of her heart, wondered how so very much could be wrong in her life when she'd only been alive for fourteen short years.

Yet the deception had to stand. As foul as it made her feel, Olivia had to keep making Mira think she was seeing things, that she was crazy, because otherwise Mira might start asking too many questions about why exactly Olivia's reflection wasn't behaving as it should. For almost two weeks, Mira didn't talk to Olivia beyond what was absolutely necessary in class, and far worse, she wouldn't resonate, not even when Professor Luma threatened to give them both a zero for the day. Olivia wandered the halls in a daze, feeling like a stormcloud, and even talking to Midori didn't help. He'd been so happy, so proud of her for flipping things around on Joe and turning a potential showstopper into an ally, but even his gruffly pleased, "Good fuckin' going with that one, girlie," couldn't shake her doldrums. She felt hollow, half a girl, and having to look at Mira in each class only made her notice her emptiness more. There had been no reply yet from her father, either, which was quite possibly giving her an ulcer; every moment she wasn't thinking about Mira, she was wondering when the guillotine would fall. It all made her life very unpleasant. Even the delicious Academy food tasted ashy and unappealing. She sat alone at lunch, staring at her food, while the rest of the school buzzed around her. She couldn't even work up the energy to thrash Denny during sparring.

On a Saturday morning she woke up to find Mira firmly ensconced in her usual cocoon of blankets, not a piece of her visible, and it was as clear as a flashing neon sign saying 'leave me alone'. Olivia sighed, got up, cried in the shower for a while, and then decided that if she wasn't wanted, she'd take the hint and make herself scarce. She dragged herself out of their room and couldn't even muster the gumption to slam the door. This was all her fault, really; she'd gone and made a friend during a mission, of all the incomptentent and foolish things to do. She should write her father right away, take it all back, beg him to forgive her, finish the mission and get the hell out of Death City and never make the same mistake again.

Eventually, her feet took her, probably out of habit, to Deathbucks. She paused at the door when someone inside bellowed, oddly enough, "Mandolin? _Mandolin?_"

When she edged through the door, the bellower was revealed to be little Joe Buttataki, red-faced and standing toe-to-toe with the owner of Deathbucks, a much taller and bigger man whom Olivia vaguely remembered being named 'Leo'.

Right now, Leo looked disturbingly close to having a stroke, and he had a deeply impressive vein thumping in his temple. "You scrawny little shit! My coffee is the best in town and you know it! Whoever heard of Mandolin coffee! Not me, that's for sure!"

Joe's generally narrow eyes slit even further and he actually reached up to poke Leo in the chest. For a short boy, he didn't lack courage. "It's called Mandheling, you Neanderthal, and if you actually think that watered-down crap you're trying to pass off as coffee is any good-"

Here Leo jumped in with a few insults that were probably illegal in several states, at a volume that gave Olivia an instant headache and prompted the last few lingering Deathbucks patrons to flee at high speeds. Joe's face moved from red to purple, and eventually he shouted himself out of breath and started hissing, "Mandolin! Mandolin!" over and over, face twitching.

When Leo actually made a fist, Olivia decided perhaps she'd better step in. She snagged Joe's wrist and started hauling him to the door; he dug his feet in, apparently not done with his raging, but she managed to get him out of Deathbucks, Leo's parting shot of, "-fancy-ass wannabe coffee, fuck me sideways if I ever carry that pretentious shit!" ringing in their ears.

Joe gave a whimpering sort of growl and slumped against a wall, clutching his head.

"I'm a little worried steam's going to come out of your ears," Olivia said, once his face had returned to a more human color.

He looked at her with something approaching despair. "That idiot in there is keeping the student body from the most heavenly coffee I've ever tasted. He won't even listen!"

"But I've seen you drink Deathbucks before," she pointed out, utterly befuddled.

Joe gave a theatrical groan and covered his face. "Don't remind me. I'm ashamed. That was a dark time in my life. But I've tasted the light now, you know, and-" Here he paused, mouth open, to goggle over her shoulder. Obviously inspiration had struck.

"What-" she began, but he interrupted, with a great skip and a leap forward, to grab her by the elbows and shake her bodily.

"I've got it! I'll get the cafeteria to carry Mandheling, surely they'll listen to reason, thoes lunch ladies are a salty bunch but they know delicious when they taste it!" With nary a word of farwell, he scampered off, mumbling under his breath and looking deeply diabolical.

Olivia peered into the window of Deathbucks to see if it were safe to order something, but just as she glanced in, Leo snapped the handle of a mop over his knee and she decided it probably wouldn't be wise. "There goes my morning," she muttered, but she wasn't too upset. Coffee wasn't fun to drink alone, and being outside was nice. It was actually a pretty day; cold, of course, as befitted the middle of November, but the sky was cloudless and stunningly clear. She was reminded of Mira's eyes and all her good cheer promptly evaporated.

She almost felt like hunting down Joe, just to have some sort of company, no matter how plan-ruining and possibly insane that company might be, but it sounded as if he were quite busy with his coffee scheming.

Then Olivia stood up, very straight, and blinked. He was busy with his coffee campaign- obsessed, actually- and that meant there was no chance he might see her sneaking into the catacombs of the Academy. She could go there, right now, and if she were quick about it, he'd never know.

She zoomed into Deathbucks, shouted, "Gonna use your bathroom! Thanks!" to a still apoplectic Leo, and had the door locked and her transmitter assembled as fast as she possibly could, with fingers shaking from adrenaline. Thank goodness she'd begun to carry all the pieces with her, mostly due to paranoia that her father would finally send Midori a reply. She wanted to hear his answer right away. After all, if she had to run to keep her head on her shoulders, it would be nice to have as much warning as possible.

"Midori," she whispered, once the transmitter was on. "Midori. You there?"

"Course," he said. "What's up?"

"Nothing bad," she said immediately, because he was probably perturbed at being contacted by her out of schedule. "Joe's doing something, he's distracted. I'm going into the catacombs. Gotta do it now. Okay? I just, uh, figured I should tell you. I won't be long, I don't have much of a window, so if you don't hear from me within-" She frowned, then said, "-Um, three hours, you'll know something's wrong. Okay?"

A beat of silence, then Midori said, "Holy shit."

"Yeah."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah..." She didn't realize she was gnawing on a finger until it started bleeding.

"Okay. Go. Be fucking careful, though, got it?"

"Okay."

Before she could tear apart her transmitter, he added, a little mournfully, "I hope you get something and you can leave that goddamn school."

Guilt tore at her with poison claws. "Nova, um, I know, he's still gone- god, Midori, I'm so sorry."

"No," he said immediately, firmly. "Didn't mean it like that. If I was with him I'd be worryin' about you, so ain't nobody winning right now. There's nothing either of us can do, as much as I fucking hate it, and there's no way I'd leave you here alone. Don't start feeling bad, you can't afford it right now. You've gotta-"

"-stay on my fucking toes and try not to die, right? I know, I know, you say it enough." She was laughing, though she wasn't sure why, and Midori joined in, sounding like a staticky earthquake.

"Okay. Get going. I'll be waiting."

"Bye." Then she was out of Deathbucks and barrelling towards the school, as fast as she could go, dodging cars and jaywalking like her life depended on it. Well, it did a bit, she supposed, stomach flipping as she thought again about the reply her father hadn't yet sent.

The school was mostly deserted, as was usual on a Saturday morning; everyone was either out having fun on their weekend or at home sleeping. The odd bookworm or teacher floated through the halls, but Olivia ignored them, tugging on the ends of her hair and battling to keep her face from showing all the electricity inside her. When she stole a peek through the library doors, Miss Yumi was absent, but further stealthy reconnaisance revealed her to be in the hospital wing, removing what looked to be a gigantic wasp's stinger from an older boy's arm; it was serendipitous luck, and Olivia cheered silently all the way down the stairs to the catacombs.

The door to Room 46X was just as plain and unassuming as it had been last time Joe had chased her away, green and dull. She pulled out her identification card, heart thumping, held it up to the lock, and whispered hopefully, "Shampoo."

Nothing happened. She swayed, aghast, and shoved her card all the way against the lock, hissing in rapid succession, "Toothpaste! Mouthwash! Soap! Floss! Shoe polish! Conditioner- oh. Really?"

The door swung open at her final attempt, with a hideous, tortured squeak that she very much hoped wasn't indicative of how this mission was going to go. She slipped inside and shut the door carefully, then turned to regard the forest of stacked books with a sinking sensation. There had to be thousands of books here, and they were so disorganized that she could see 'Know Your Pressure Points for Easy and Fun Violence' right on top of 'Poisonous Flora of New Mexico, Volume 2.'

She glanced at her watch and blew out a nervous breath. How long could she gamble on Joe staying occupied? He didn't know she was here, true, she was pretty sure he'd bought all her lies, and yet- she set her teeth and moved in, looking for anything old, anything set aside carefully away from other books, anything about human weapons. She'd gotten far too lucky already, been given far too many breaks by the universe, and she thought she probably deserved at least a little luck, but to rely on it would be beyond foolish, it would be suicidal. So she moved rapidly, breath coming faster as the minutes wore on, smothered hope still struggling for life inside her.

Hours later, hope died. There was nothing, not a single book about the origin of human weapons. There were books on every single other thing under the sun, but not what she needed, nothing to serve as they key to her freedom. She slithered out of Room 46X and trudged drearily to her dorm, managed to call Midori and assure him she was still alive, and then slipped under her covers, staring longingly at Mira's soft cream-colored blanket, lying wrinkled on the other, empty bed. Before she knew it, she was sobbing, unchecked moans of frustration and loneliness, and despite how very pathetic it made her feel, she cried until she fell asleep.

* * *

Tinfoil rattled as Midori unwrapped his dinner, and he inhaled greedily, grinning. Even cold, his sweet little widow's home cooking was some of the finest grub he'd ever had, and she always made sure to send him off with leftovers. Right now, he was staring at the prettiest piece of lasagna he'd seen in a lifetime, and it made the nasty, damp basement he was cooped up in a fair sight nicer.

"_Food_," someone groaned, and before Midori quite knew what was happening he'd been toppled off his chair, and there stood White Star, digging ravenously into the lasagna with both hands.

Midori gaped, squinted, rubbed his eye before squinting again, reached out a boot to prod the kid and make sure he was actually real, and then leapt up with a howl of delight, snatching White Star off his feet to spin him around. "Holy shit, kid, you're alive, fuckin' goddamn! I was so worked up about you! You couldn't send me a damn message or something? What happened? Where were you? What took so long?"

White Star, finally set back to his feet, only gave a grunt before falling back on the lasagna. "Questions later," he mumbled through a full mouth. Midori scowled, fully intending to cuff some sense into the boy, who was dead wrong if he thought he could disappear for so long and then just waltz back into the mission without explaining a few things, but then a few things registered. First, White Star had managed to sneak up on Midori, which had never once happened before. Secondly, and most dismayingly, White Star had dropped twenty pounds he could ill afford to lose, his pale, sickly stretched to the breaking point around his bones. When he glanced at Midori around the last handful of lasagna, his face looked like a cadaver's, sunken and bruised. He was scratched up from head to toe, he stank powerfully, and his clothes were shredded. Lastly, with every bite, chains around his thin wrists clanked.

"What the _fuck_ happened to you?" Midori said at last, once the lasagna was gone.

White Star made a caveman-esque noise before collapsing into a chair. It was wooden, wobbly, and decidedly not cushiony, but he flopped into it as if it were the most delightful, comfortably, lavishly stuffed armchair in the entire world, with a relieved sigh that made Midori's heart constrict. "Grey Star caught me out for snoopin' on Blacktail and not telling him, he got pissed. He took me to Osorezan," the kid said at last. The final word dropped from his ashen lips like the final rose onto a grave.

"I'm going to kill him," Midori said, and he didn't think he'd ever meant anything so much in his entire life. "I'm going to kill him, and I'm gonna fucking enjoy every bloody second of it."

White Star snorted, rubbing his eyes. "Not if I get there first," he said, and it didn't sound as if he were joking either.

Midori righted the chair he'd been so unceremoniously evicted from and sat down in it, numbly, mostly because he was so white-hot furious that it was probably best to be stationary. He was a little less likely to go roaring off to Japan and tear out a certain Ghost's throat, anyway. A _little_.

"Wanna talk about it?" Midori said, for lack of anything else to say.

White Star shook his head emphatically. His pale hair was so stiff with sweat and dirt that it barely moved. "Hell no. Never. Was the worst couple days of my entire life, I just wanna forget it for now. All I want is these chains off. And more food, if you've got it. Airplane food sucks."

He held out his wrists for inspection, and Midori winced. They were raw, oozing, rubbed skinless. "Aw, shit. Okay. Stretch it out on that rock over there." He pointed to a chunk of concrete in the corner, fallen in from the decaying upper floors somewhere, and White Star slumped his way over and pulled the chain taut over the top of it, wrists on either side and face turned prudently away. Midori sighed and reached for a thick piece of rebar in the mess of rubble they'd shoved to the side of the basement. He had to tug and yank on it quite a bit, but eventually it came free, and he readied himself, rebar raised. "Don't move."

White Star, as half-starved and ragged as he was, still managed to roll his eyes and say snarkily, "No shit, Sherlock," which cheered Midori a little. Sparks flew as he hammered on the chain. Luckily it wasn't particularly heavy duty; eventually White Star was free, albeit with the cuffs still around his wrists and the ends of the severed chain swinging.

Midori was about to head right back to peppering the kid with questions, or possibly hug the breath out of him from sheer relief, he wasn't sure, but then White Star's eyes shifted over to look at nothing for a moment, and he flushed, before saying, "We didn't need to do all that, did we? We could've just picked the locks."

Midori glanced in the direction White Star had looked, but didn't see a thing, only deep shadows. "You're really okay, then?" he said, swallowing, because he'd seen what Osorezan did to people. He'd seen Grey Star come crawling out of those swaying, predatory trees twenty years ago, screaming and screaming, dripping from head to toe in slick gore.

Grey Star, once he'd managed to stop screaming, had refused to ever speak about his time in the Gateway to Hell, and White Star unknowingly followed his idol's example. The boy just stiffened, licked his cracked lips, and said slowly, "I'm fine. Or I'll be fine, anyway, whatever. Got a lockpick?"

"Yeah," Midori muttered, disturbed all the way down to his bones. He had the cuffs off the kid's skinny wrists in ten minutes, and then he proceeded to stuff White Star to the brim with just about all the food and water he had. He still wanted answers, he still wanted to tear Grey Star limb from conniving limb, but right now, it was more than enough to watch White Star breathing and alive. For a little while, Midori just sat in silence while the boy ate, thinking about Shannon and Olivia and wondering how all the little ones who'd showed up in his life over the years, in so many strange and tragic ways, could have possibly come to all mean so very much to him, as different as they were. Perhaps he was just a sentimental old fool.

"So. How's the mission been going?" White Star said a while later, sleepily, surrounded by a truly impressive pile of shredded energy bar wrappers, apple cores, and sandwich crumbs.

"All right," said Midori distractedly, the understatement of the century, but something White Star had said earlier had caught his attention. "Kiddo, how long were you in that forest?"

White Star blinked at him, and then his face shifted, closed off in an uneasy way that told Midori far more than words ever would about just what the kid's time in that place had cost him. "Not sure," White Star said, a little stiffly. "I've been thinking about it and the best I can place it at is two weeks, max. I think."

"It's been over a month," Midori said tightly. "It's November 16th."

"Oh, fuck," White Star said breathlessly. "How-" His eyes did that shifting again, to that dark corner, and his mouth twitched as if he wanted to say something. In the end he said nothing at all, just shrugged and slumped forward to lay his weary head against the tabletop.

Midori only just caught his hand before it reached out to brush back the boy's bangs. "I lied, some shit's gone down with Blacktail, but it's the middle of the fucking night and you just got off a plane. Hit the hay, all right? I'll catch you up in the morning."

White Star shot him a grateful glance, mumbled something unintelligible, and slid off the chair to slither across the grimy basement floor to the pile of blankets that had been serving Midori as a makeshift bed. "G'night, kiddo, sleep tight," Midori said softly, once he was sure White Star was out; it took a suprisingly short period of time. Well, perhaps it wasn't that surprising, considering what he'd been through. God only knew where he'd found the cash to book a flight. Midori suspected he didn't really want to know.

What _was_ surprising was the way Midori, keeping watch all night long, kept hearing distant wingbeats.

* * *

White Star woke early, with a start, sitting up to see Midori snoring with his face smashed against the table, halfway slouching off the chair, shaven head shining in one of the spotty beams of morning sunshine filtering through the wreckage upstairs. The red raven was sitting on the piece of rubble they'd smashed White Star's chain apart on last night, preening a few glossy feathers back into place.

"Fuck you, chicken," White Star hissed at it, out of sheer principle. The damn thing had refused to shut its ugly beak the entire plane ride over to the States, and just because no one else could hear it yammering didn't mean White Star couldn't. It had been hard enough stealing money and some asshole's ID and then getting a goddamn plane ticket with chains around his wrists; eventually he'd just stolen a big coat to hide them and kept his hands below the counters while signing everything. The bird's constant sarcastic commentary had just been the rotten cherry on top.

The stupid thing just gave a raucous laugh. It seemed quite happy to be back in bird form, not to mention back among the real world, where trees didn't have eyes and monsters didn't lurk around every corner. "When do I meet the girl, huh, the girl with the eyes?"

"I don't know. Eventually." White Star flopped back down and burrowed into the blankets, wincing as his entire abused body began to ache. Something rasped down by his feet, and he glanced down; paperwork had fallen out of one of Midori's bags, and the Cascadia teardrop logo was clearly printed on the header.

It was obviously related to the mission if it were from Cascadia. White Star sighed, closed his eyes and tried to sleep for a little while longer, but eventually he gave up and reached down for the paperwork, figuring he might as well get caught up. It distracted him from wondering how the hell an entire month had passed in Osorezan, too, which was nice.

He had to read it three times before it made any sense to him. "Fuck," he said, quietly at first, and then, a full-blown shout, "Fuck! Fuck, Midori, wake up!" He threw a pebble at Midori and nailed him square in the forehead; the older man gave a great, whuffling snort before shooting upright, eyepatch rakishly askew over one ear, leaving a patch of drool on the table.

"What? What are you goin' on about?" he said irritably, rubbing his back with a wince.

"This, you motherfucker!" White Star rattled the Cascadia paperwork. "What the hell kind of shit is that moron Blacktail trying to pull? How is she not a smear on Lord Death's fancy sidewalk right now? God, I leave for one we- one month and everything goes to shit!"

"It's too early for this," Midori groaned.

"That's not an answer," White Star spat. Behind Midori, the scarlet raven gave up preening and hopped to the floor to scratch about. It looked, oddly enough, rather normal. Maybe life outside Osorezan was rubbing off on it already.

"Shit," Midori grumbled, scrubbing roughly at the sleep in his eye. "You're gonna be pissed, all right, but you were outta the picture and I didn't really have a better idea, so don't flip out until I'm done talkin', okay?"

White Star regarded his mentor suspiciously. The man actually looked sheepish, which was disturbing. "She okay?"

"Of course she's okay," Midori snapped, and now he looked highly offended. "She got some fool plan into her head, sent a message to her dad, and-"

"You read it!"

"Course I read it before I sent it! She was fucking crying talking to me about it, I wasn't gonna let her kick a sleepin' dragon without me backin' her up!"

"So what was in the letter that pissed old man Deering off so much? And if it was so bad, why'd you send it?" White Star asked cautiously, shaking the paperwork again. He was getting sick to his stomach, and half of it was probably eating too much after so long of near starvation, but the rest was pure nerves. Blacktail was a good operative, very good, but it surely sounded as if she'd done something stupid, and now that he was paying attention, White Star noticed that Midori's pants bore a rusty-looking bloodstain, and the dagger lying on the floor had a brand-new chip on the edge.

Midori pursed his lips, looking irate. "She told him everything. Told him she knew she was a witch, knew that he'd been experimentin' on her blood, and she told him that she was willing to go public with everything, to ruin his reputation. Stock'd go way down if it caught on that the CEO of Cascadia had been keepin' his daughter out of school to be a fucking science experiment. Not to mention all the forbidden shit they're doing in those labs." Here Midori scowled even harder. "Genetic experimentation, viral warfar, all kinds of things that are so fucking illegal you wouldn't believe. And all the murderin' she did for him, too."

"Daughter?" White Star said hoarsely, focusing on one word. "Blacktail- Deering- aw, fuck!"

Midori frowned before twisting around in the chair to pop his back with a sound like machine gun fire. "Yeah, I know. Zip your lips, though. And she put in a page she'd ripped out from some witch's handbook. Told him she'd found her ma, that her ma'd given her that book, and she told him that she'd keep her mouth shut, finish the mission and get him all the information he needed to do his nasty experiments on human weapons."

"But?" White Star said with bated breath.

"But in return, he's gotta let her go," Midori said simply. "She wants to stay here. She doesn't want to kill for hire anymore."

"Oh, man," White Star breathed, collapsing into the blankets. "Wow. Whoa. Oh, man."

"I know, it's pretty cunning. That's why I sent it." Midori took a moment to glare at the Cascadia paperwork White Star still held. "I was so sure Deering would go for it, I mean, it's a sweet deal from his end, she's got a lot of dirt on him and if he agrees all he risks losin' is a single operative."

"And his daughter!" White Star pointed out.

"He doesn't think of her like that, the bastard's used her from day one," Midori growled. He stood up, ostensibly to stretch more, but White Star suspected it was more so he could stomp around and relieve some temper.

White Star sat, and thought, and re-read the Cascadia paperwork. Reading it was disturbing, to say the least, and especially so now that he knew the girl Deering was threatening so fiercely was actually his own daughter. "This is so messed up! She's his family, how can he tell her he's gonna kill her?" he exclaimed at last, throwing the papers aside.

Midori wheeled around to face him, and that one eye was burning bright. "About as messed up as a brother dumping his own family into Osorezan, of all places," he said sharply, twisting the knife. White Star couldn't quite get out anything that made sense, not to that, so he just frowned and looked away, rubbing his tender wrists. After a little bit Midori relented and said, "Anyhow, I've already caught three Cascadia ops tryin' to sneak into the city. Armed to the teeth."

"You've been protecting her? Unpaid?" White Star's jaw fell open.

"Yeah. She- uh-" Here Midori's wrinkled face went a bit guilty, and he actually shuffled his feet. "She doesn't know, she thinks Deering just hasn't got back to her yet."

"Dude!"

"Yeah, yeah! I know, it's messed up leavin' her hanging, but she's got to focus! If she gets him what he wants, he might leave her alone!I just- I didn't want her to be scared."

White Star huffed, tugging a blanket up around his shoulders to combat the morning chill of the basement. The raven flapped ponderously over and landed heavily on his shoulder. "This'd be the perfect opportunity to bring her into the Clan," he said slowly, watching Midori for a reaction. The raven shuffled around and his skin began to crawl.

"Nope. Not yet, anyway. She's found something or someone up at that school what gave her the balls to go head to head with her old man," Midori said promptly. "Girlie deserves a chance to make her own life and we're gonna give her."

"So the two of us are about to take on Cascadia. Great. Fantastic! This is exactly what I was hoping for," White Star groused, shaking the raven off and diving beneath the blankets. "You fucked up, old man," he added, a bit muffled.

Midori sighed gustily and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We gotta keep watch on Olivia. I've got some traps set up around the city perimeter, but Cascadia's only gonna start comin' in harder and faster. Only reason they haven't done worse is Lord Death."

"Ten more minutes," White Star wheedled from beneath his blankets. "Come on, I'm half dead here."

Midori just rolled his eye.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Olivia said, yet again.

Mira only shot her a grumpy look and turned away. Olivia persisted, ignoring the side eye Mr. Marquis wa giving them both from the front of the classroom. "I'm sorry. I believe you. I do. I'm sorry." She probably would have said the sky was orange if it meant Mira would talk to her again, would resonate with her and fill in all the painful cracks in her soul.

"You didn't believe me. You made me think I was nuts," Mira said in a low voice, the first words she'd said directly to Olivia in days.

Low or not, they were wonderful words to hear, simply because they were coming from Mira, and Olivia could hardly stop the giant grin that wanted to pop up on her face. "I'm sorry," she said hastily, trying to appear appropriately remorseful.

Mira glanced at her, then looked away, fiddling with a fraying bit of her bandages. "Usually students go on their first mission at the end of second term. Middle of the year," she whispered after a little bit.

"Oh. Um- okay?" Seeing as now, in the beginning of December, they were just approaching the final week of first term, Olivia wasn't entirely sure how that was relevant, but she tuned out the vengeful clack of Mr. Marquis' chalk and tried, timidly, to reach for resonance.

Mira blocked it, with a expression in her blue eyes that hurt every part of Olivia and gave her guilt new, ferocious life. "I can't right now. You made me think I was crazy, just like everyone at this stupid school did after Eimy, they made me think I was a- a bad person, weak, so I can't right now, but soon, okay?" she muttered, yanking on her tie. "We'll fight together in the middle of the year. Promise. Just give me some time to figure out what's going on in my head and why I'm seeing stuff. I'm not leaving you. I just need a little more time."

"I miss you," Olivia said sadly. Her guilt snowballed, turning into a chilly, heavy lump in her stomach.

"I miss you too," Mira said, almost angrily. "Now shut up and pay attention, Marquis is gonna flay us both if we don't keep quiet."

Olivia snorted, but obeyed, mostly because judging by the slow twitch building in Mr. Marquis' left eye, Mira was definitely right. They stopped whispering and buckled down to taking notes for the rest of the class, but just before they left the classroom to take their lunch hour, Mira reached out to poke Olivia's hand. "Wanna go get coffee?" she said, still staring off somewhere into the distance.

The giant grin won this time. "Okay!" said Olivia, containing her urge to dance.

They left the school, heading to Deathbucks, and that was when a man on the street stepped in front of them and pulled out a gun.

Olivia_ knew_ that gun. She'd held one identical to it in her hands, countless times. "Cascadia," she breathed, and then someone screamed, and Mira yelped, and a gunshot rang out.

* * *

"Let's go over it one more time, Jennifer," said Professor Luma patiently, in her soothing honeyed tones.

"_No_," Olivia barked, crossing her arms and outright refusing to be soothed. "No! I need to go see Mira!"

"Mira's sleeping right now, and Miss Yumi's right by her side. You know that." Nonetheless, Professor Luma blew out a breath and leaned back in her chair, looking very sympathetic. Her office was quite the opposite of what Olivia would have expected from the woman; rather than being pink and frilly and feminine, it was very dark, lots of leather and glass and chrome, everything neatly in its place and not a personal knickknack to be seen anywhere. Even the calendar on the wall, sporting a theatrical picture of a stormcloud, hadn't been written in. Truth be told, it was awfully reminiscent of Olivia's father's office, which was't helping matters in the slightest.

"I have to go," Olivia said, yet again.

"One more time," Luma bargained, tapping her pen against the smooth surface of her desk. "One more time, for accuracy's sake, and you can go see Mira for as long as you want."

"Fine," Olivia gritted. "We were going to coffee, at Deathbucks." She watched Luma bend over her notepad, skimming the words on it, triple-checking everything about Jennifer Mason's testimony on the person who'd shot Mirabelle Nygus. "We were at the corner of Humerus and North Phalange, when a man pulled out a gun. He was a head taller than me, maybe five ten, not very tall, dark hair and eyes, olive skin. Maybe Italian or Spanish. Wearing a grey suit, very normal looking. He raised the gun, I shoved Mira away, he hit her in the shoulder, and then I attacked him. Several civilians immediately jumped in to help, but he fought us off and ran away, down Humerus. Towards the front gates, I'm assuming. I would have gone after him, but- Mira." Thinking of him, she ran over his face again, memorizing it with deadly purpose through the rage clogging her mind. She didn't recognize him from Cascadia, but that didn't mean anything; he could simply be a common mercenary. She licked the split lip he'd given her, tasting pennies. At least she wasn't wondering why a man with exclusive Cascadia weaponry was after her. Her father must not have wanted to bother writing her back, in response to her plan. He'd rather just sign her death warrant.

"Jennifer," Professor Luma said cautiously, and Olivia blinked and looked up. "Try to breathe. Your partner's going to be just fine, mostly due to your quick reactions, and we'll find out who that person was. Don't worry. Lord Death protects his students."

"You're going to post sentries on the waypoints in and out of the city, then?" Olivia said pointedly. "Vehicle checks?"

Professor Luma looked at her strangely, and Olivia knew she wasn't quite all the way inside Jennifer Mason's skin right now, she knew that her description of the incident had been awfully thorough and that she wasn't reacting with the panic that might be expected from a fourteen-year-old who'd just been shot at. She knew, but she couldn't fight it; Blacktail held the reins now, and Blacktail wanted blood for blood. "We'll handle it," Luma said, tapping her pen against scarlet lips. "We'll keep you safe." An expression like grief pulled on her pretty face. "Jennifer, I'm very sorry. It's our job as teachers to protect our students, and we failed Mirabelle today. I'm so sorry."

Olivia stood up and let the anger spread. "You did fail," she said, very coldly, to Luma's bowed head. "And don't call her Mirabelle."

She stalked off in the direction of the hospital wing and left Luma alone in the coldness of her office.

* * *

Mira was beautiful asleep. Her face, usually so vivid with emotion and life, animated with all the smooth clarity of a rippling brook, relaxed with sleep into placid serenity, and her dark lashes were soft and rich against her cheeks. Olivia loved it quite a bit, and would freely admit that it put a whole flock of butterflies in her stomach, but nonetheless, she had to wake her weapon up.

It took a minute of gentle prodding, but then Mira blinked her way to awareness out of a mist of painkillers and said, "Hey."

"Hey," Olivia returned softly. "Sorry, but I've got to go to class. I wanted to see if you wanted breakfast before I go or anything. Water?"

Mira smiled a little. "No, I'm okay, Nurse Jen. Stop worrying."

"I'm not worrying. I'm paying you back for all the blood you lost because of me."

Mira sighed and sat up in the bed, gingerly, taking care not to jostle her healing shoulder. "I hate the way your face gets when you say that," she muttered, brows drawing together. "It wasn't your fault, Jen. You saved my _life_."

Olivia just made a wordless noise of disagreement, because that gun had been pointed at her, and leaned in to press her forehead to Mira's for a moment, relishing the caressing warmth of their renewed resonance. "Sure you don't want anything?"

Mira nodded. "I'm fine."

"Joe said he'd help me take notes for you. I'll pop in at lunch and bring you something, okay? Something good." Olivia felt very happy, and more calm than she had in a long time. Mira's breath was sweet on her cheek, and her presence was lovely in Olivia's soul. For a little while, while Mira was near, the anger subsided, and Olivia could stop imagining the color of her father's blood.

Mira's smile was like a sunrise. "Okay. Miss you already."

Olivia pinked and made a noise like a startled Chihuahua. When she'd woken up in the hospital wing and seen Olivia by her bedside, teary and chock-full of guilt, Mira had instantly thrown herself at her, nearly toppling off the bed and incurring Miss Yumi's vocal wrath, and since then she'd been saying things like that more and more. "You too," Olivia said, a bit awkwardly, but she meant it, and they grinned at each other like absolute fools until Olivia shut the door behind her.

"How is she?" said Joe.

She blinked at him, adjusting her backpack. "How'd you get into the girl's dorms?"

He just shrugged and fell into step beside her as they headed for class. "Through the front door. I wanted to tell you you did a good thing the other day, with that shooter."

"What? Breaking his nose?" She laughed mirthlessly, and probably a little of the blackness inside her crept into the laugh, because Joe sent her a sideways, measuring sort of glance. "I should have snapped his neck for hurting her. I let him get away. I was too slow."

"He was a grown man and he was armed," Joe pointed out, reasonably enough, but it didn't make Olivia feel any better. "Anyway, you could have made things a lot worse, if you know what I mean." He waggled his eyebrows and waved his fingers mysteriously.

She stared at him, then got it. "Oh! Uh, you're talking about me being a- thingy."

He nodded. "The fact that you didn't use- thingy- against him, even with Mira hurt, well, that just shows me I made the right choice, trusting you." He snapped her a wry little salute before heading off to his locker. She opened her own, watching him go, feeling far too much of everything.


	11. Chapter 11

He was deeply disguised, but it was still nice to be out in the open air, with birds that twittered instead of taunted and fresh winds that didn't bring the stink of sulphur to burn his nose. White Star was having a rather nice time keeping surveillance on Blacktail, all in all.

"This is so much easier," Midori said in his ear, via one of Cascadia's fancy transmitters. They'd decided that it was only fair to use the enemy's technology against them. "It's fucking _hard_ blending in when you're as tall as me."

"Or as ugly," White Star murmured, disguising his lip movements behind a bite of delicious, crumbly, iced pumpkin pastry. "Unf," he added to nobody, out of sheer appreciation for the wonders of food.

"How's the coffee there?" Midori said. White Star didn't bother to say anything, which was answer enough. He just continued stuffing his face around his fake moustache and keeping a discreetly watchful eye on Blacktail, sitting four tables over inside Deathbucks with a lean little blond boy who had the most suspicious eyes White Star had ever seen.

It was busy in the coffee shop, but if he listened hard, White Star could pick out most of their conversation. "She's doing a lot better," Blacktail was saying. The blond said something to her, and she flushed up to her eyebrows, pulling her scarf up over her mouth. Was he hitting on her? Now that was a strange duo, and even if he was just as scrawny as she was, he didn't look like nearly an equal match for the skills White Star knew she had.

The boy said something else, frowning at the bull-necked owner of the place, and Olivia laughed before draining her coffee. They stood to leave, but then she smacked her forehead and went over to the counter. The blond sent one last glare towards the owner, then wandered outside to wait beyond the doors.

"She's getting coffee, I'm guessing for the gunshot girl," White Star mumbled to Midori. "I'll trail her as far as I can."

"Good," said Midori, sounding a bit echo-y at this distance. "Perimeter of the city is secure, I'm on my fifth pass."

White Star sighed in relief- he was already getting tired of beating the shit out of the mongrels Cascadia kept trying to sneak into the city. In the five days since he'd returned, he and Midori'd had a total of four run-ins with the enemy between them. Cascadia was really taking Blacktail's death seriously to pay for that many assassins, and they'd all been reasonably skilled, too. But today, he had a full stomach, the stupid bird was quiet and content to eyeball Blacktail like she was dinner, and it looked like White Star would simply get to relax instead of worrying about where to hide another body. He smiled behind his moustache and took a sip of his rather strong coffee.

The little bell on the door of Deathbucks rang as someone stepped inside. White Star glanced up casually.

"Andrei?" he said, before he could stop himself. That long mane of white-blonde hair was unmistakeable.

Andrei stiffened, obviously shocked, and turned his gaze from Blacktail's unsuspecting back; it took a moment for him to pick White Star out from his disguise. "You," he said venomously. His hand went to his bicep, instinctively, where his star tattoo was hidden, and it made White Star bare his teeth.

"Traitor," he hissed, standing up so fast that he knocked his chair over, uncaring of the way everyone was staring. "You leave the Clan and think we won't find you?"

Midori growled in his ear like a wild dog. "Andrei, that mother_fucker_, I thought for sure that once Grey Star dropped you in the forest he'd have taken over and hunted that lying son of a bitch down himself!"

"I guess he hasn't gotten around to it yet," White Star answered grimly, then, to Andrei, who was standing with the tense stillness of a wolf, "Selling your fucking blade to Cascadia's purposes already? You're a whore, and I'm going to kill you."

Blacktail went white as a sheet, the coffee she'd just been handed dropping from her grip. Andrei snarled, dropped his hand to his belt, and White Star fired from under the table.

He missed. Andrei, always a slippery snake, was behind a flipped table in the next instant, and the place was full of screaming. White Star leapt over the counter, grabbing Blacktail by the arm as he went; she followed him nimbly and they crouched there. The moment White Star popped his head up, Andrei sprayed gunfire.

"You're okay," Blacktail said to him. "I'm glad. The wig's stupid, though."

He spared her an incredulous glance as he ripped off his moustache. "Is this really the time for that?"

She shrugged calmly, and the way she showed all her teeth made the raven on White Star's shoulder caw in vicious delight. "My father sent that man after me, obviously, so it'll be fun killing him."

"We can keep your cover safe, though," White Star said, gnawing on his lip. He'd never seen this side of her, but she was holding the knife she'd nabbed from his belt steady and strong, and her eyes were wild and bright with bloodlust. "Let me kill him, you stay here, and maybe you'll have a chance to get clear from all this still. Midori's on his way-"

"No fucking way," she said fervently. More gunfire roared against the counter, someone wailed, and glass shattered. Hopefully the civilians were smart enough to get out of here.

Then another voice said, quite sedately, "Young man, if you don't put that gun down and come out with your hands up, there won't be enough left of you to bother burying."

"Who the hell's that?" said White Star.

"Mr. Marquis," Blacktail told him, lips pressed thin. "A teacher from the school. His weapon's a rifle."

"Wonderful, more bullets. Just what we need."

Midori spoke up, then, sounding a little breathless. "ETA ten minutes, kiddo, you still alive?"

"Don't bother, some asshole teacher from the school's here to play hero," White Star told him, hastily sticking his moustache back on. He'd have to blend in to be able to sneak away, even in the chaos.

Blacktail made a sound like a frustrated tiger. "This isn't fair," she spat when he glanced at her. "They're after me, they shot Mira. I want to kill them."

"It's just one guy," White Star pointed out.

She turned eyes that shone like an opal onto him, and he leaned backwards in spite of himself. "All of them! I want to kill all of them! Cascadia. My father- they hurt her!"

"You're going witchy," he informed her, intrigued in spite of the full-on battle occurring on the other side of the counter. When he glanced at her hand, wrapped arond her dagger, it was as black as dried blood, slender fingers turned to claws.

"You haven't seen anything yet," she told him ferally. Shimmering scales were creeping up her cheeks.

Yet more gunshots could be heard, then an agonized cry that sputtered off into ragged, damp moans. It appeared Andrei the Clan traitor was about to meet the end he deserved; so much for Argent Star. White Star smiled to himself. "Jennifer. Jennifer, honey, where are you?" someone called.

Blacktail shook herself, as if she were struggling, before shoving his dagger back at him. "I'm here, Miss Yumi," she answered shakily. The scales receded slowly, as White Star watched, and it was deeply impressive how quickly she could switch from homicidal to scared little girl hiding away.

A woman with shiny glasses and dark hair popped her head over the counter. "Oh, good, thank Death," she sighed. "Come on out. That man's down for the count. Come on, then, and you too, sir."

White Star and Blacktail trailed out from behind the counter, she fully human again, and he in disguise, with both hands over his stomach. "I'm going to puke," he groaned pathetically, trying to look sick and terrified, before dashing outside to make his escape. The teachers let him go, probably thinking they could collect him in a moment, after her vomited. Once outside, he darted into an alley, taking advantage of the crowd of panicked people and stopped cars, peeled off his disguise, tossed it into a dumpster, and slid deftly back into the mass of people. "Midori, stay put, let's see how this plays out."

"I'm close. Let me know if she needs anything."

"Okay." White Star waited, and in a little while, Blacktail, the bespectacled lady, and a broad man with wayward tufts of ridiculously orange hair came slowly out from the destroyed innards of Deathbucks. Blacktail was doing a great impression of scared, clutching onto the lady's arm and looking wildly all around her with big, dark, teary eyes. "How did you get here so fast?" he heard her ask querulously.

The bespectacled woman sighed and looked upset, patting Blacktail's tangled hair. "We caught that man acting suspiciously earlier, trespassing on Academy grounds, and later Mirabelle said she thought that he had a weapon. We figured that since you were the target of that other gunman, he might be looking for you, so we did the same."

"Looks like we've got damn good timing, huh, Mason?" said the orange-haired man.

The woman was looking at Blacktail rather severely, however. "You've got some explaining to do. Why exactly are people shooting up our city looking for you?"

But Blacktail wasn't moving. She stood, feet swaying, with both hands plastered over her mouth, colorless as a ghost. "Mira said he had a weapon?" she choked out.

The two adults looked at each other. "Yes. So?"

"So that man in there threatened her? He- what, did he break into the dorms? He asked her where I was, didn't he?"

Just then, something pale caught White Star's eye, wavering behind the jagged remains of Deathbuck's plate glass windows. "Blacktail!" he roared, dashing forward desperately. "Get out of the way!"

He caught her just in time, tackling her bodily around the knees and taking her down, right as a wall of fire bloomed out from Deathbucks, with a sound like a mountain falling. For a moment, he couldn't hear anything, nor see, but he fought through it, head spinning madly, putting a hand between Blacktail's shoulderblades as she coughed. Rubble rained down on them, and he curled over her as she gasped through the smoke from the explosion.

"Uh, Andrei was sort of our detonation expert," he told her sheepishly.

They sat up, just in time to glimpse a white head disappear through the smoke. "We've got to follow him," she said frantically, crawling over to shake the woman and the orange-haired man; they were both out cold. Somewhere, a car alarm was going off, screeching like a wounded child.

"It looks like he was headed to the school," White Star said slowly. "He definitely wasn't aimed at any of the exits."

She froze. Frost crawled over the sidewalk all around her, icy, reaching fingers shaped like blades. "The school- Mira! He's going after Mira!"

"Oh, shit, your gunshot girl!" That wasn't good. This had really gone to hell in a handbasket damn quickly, and White Star found himself wishing for more ammunition and a bulletproof vest. She sent him a frantic glance, leaping to her feet; she immediately fell over.

"God, oh no, my eardrum!" Surely enough, a trickle of blood was winding down her pale neck to stain the fur hood of her parka. She tried to stand up, again, wobbling like a drunk, and White Star was shocked to see tears burning trails through the grey dust coating her cheeks. All their missions together, he didn't think he'd ever seen her cry the way she was now, unconsciously and instinctively.

"I'll help you," he said immediately, wobbling up right and reaching for her. She clasped onto his arms desperately, with bruising strength. "Wait for Midori, he'll be here any minute, we'll-"

"No! I've got to go now! Mira needs me!" She staggered forward, leaning on him, but after only a few steps she had to lean over and empty her stomach.

White Star grabbed her long dark hair for her as she did so, and when she was done and he released it, his hands came away sticky and stained. "You hit your head, you've got to have a concussion, you need to just let the school handle this," he said loudly. Stupid stubborn girl. Somewhere, sirens started to wail, lancing painfully through his ringing head.

"Help her," hissed the raven. White Star almost jumped; he'd practically forgotten the thing. "Help her! Help the girl! Help her!"

"Ideas would be fucking appreciated, that'd be much more helpful than just squawking at me," White Star snarled, uncaring if Blacktail heard him talking to no one. She was still crying, still lurching onwards, one arm around his neck, the other held tight to her chest; when he looked at it more carefully, his stomach twisted. Wrists weren't supposed to bend like that, and eyes weren't supposed to hold so much panicked agony. She had a nosebleed, too, which was worrisome.

Then her jaw fell open. "What the hell is that?" she cried. He followed her gaze to the raven flapping circles around their heads.

"You can see ugly chicken?" he asked in surprise. Maybe it was a witch thing.

The raven landed on her shoulder; she gave a little shriek and tried to push it away, nearly falling with the effort, though she still kept struggling onwards to the school. "He'll be there by now," she said in pure desperation, still trying to smack the raven away.

"It'll be okay-" White Star spoke too soon. A distant boom shook the ground beneath their feet, and she gave a great, sobbing gasp as black smoke began to curl up from the direction of the school.

"Mira- Mira- oh, no, oh no- Mira-" She wasn't even making sense, the blood from her head had covered her neck and forehead and was leaking down her collarbone now, and every step she took made her grit her teeth in pain, but she kept going.

"Midori. Go to the school. Look for a Mira," White Star said. Blacktail gave a high-pitched whine at the name.

"Already on my way," Midori barked.

"He's on his way," White Star relayed.

"You go too," she said, breath whistling. "You're faster. Go help. Please, go find her."

He hesitated, torn. The Clan wouldn't be getting paid for this, for doing the exact opposite of what their employer had decided, for protecting the girl they wanted killed. His brother wouldn't be pleased. They were going rogue with this, but Blacktail looked at him with her damp, luminous eyes, and his brother had thrown him to the demons, and Midori did always say that there were things more important than money. So White Star found himself holding her more tightly, half-carrying her, as he said, "I can't leave you like this. There could be more Cascadia agents after you. We'll get there, come on." Another boom, closer now, rattled the ground; above them, windows broke, and glass rained down as they ducked, landing all in her hair like the diamonds of a queen.

"I've got to get to Mira," she muttered, shaking from head to toe as they limped on, past fleeing civilians and huddled, terrified clumps of students.

The raven, still holding tight to her shoulder, said suddenly, "Use your powers, then, witch, save her, _witch_. Or will you let her die?"

She froze, head bowed. "I'm scared," she told it, and her voice was a terrible thing to hear.

The raven screamed mirth, and when it brushed its break tenderly over her cheek, it left a trail of scarlet as wet and shining as its plumage. "Let her die, then, and bear it forever, beautiful girl."

"You've a demon's tongue," she whispered, the whites showing all around her eyes as she stared at it. "Help me, demon. I'll need help, even as a witch. My head's spinning. Lend me some strength."

White Star was very cold, suddenly, and then she pushed him gently away, though she swayed on the spot. "This is a bad idea," he told her hoarsely as she painted everything with a thousand new colors.

Her opal eyes were grim and lovely, and her black taloned hands clenched until red dripped from her fists. "I know," she answered as the shining scales grew over her bloodless skin.

"Midori will be there to help you," he said, watching the indistinct glimmer of something ghostly and sharp rise to crown her dark head. "I'll be to the east, in the desert. I'll wait. I'll find us a way to get away."

"Thank you," she whispered with a voice like a bell. The raven rouched her cheek with a wing, delicately, and she shuddered, writhing.

"The power of a demon, take it, there you go, witch," it laughed, and she put her head in her hands and howled. White Star left, he ran, but her witch's lament followed him for a long way.

* * *

Her skin was alive, rebellious, and her chest was a monstrous inferno of power as she ran through the chaotic streets, the cadaverous red raven flying close behind. She gathered water as she went, peeled dew from the trees and sky above with an ease she'd never known before, and by the time she roared up the Academy's ivory steps, she was cloaked with it, armed, and all she wanted was to kill.

"Witch," a person shouted as she mounted the final step. She flicked a whip of ice their way without even looking; they didn't shout again. The dorms, she was so close, but thick smoke was everywhere and her eyes were burning.

"Olivia?" someone said, and she turned around to see Midori.

"Help me find her," she begged instantly. "The dorms, I'm all turned around, I can't see anything-" she stumbled over a chunk of stone, fallen from the great Academy spires looming above them.

Midori didn't seem to be capable of movement; it wasn't until she grabbed his arm that he shut his jaw. "You're a kirin witch," he told her, eye afire, as they stood among the screams and shadows. "Antlers of a deer, the scales of a dragon, the eyes of a tiger, the five sacred colors and all those in between- a kirin..." He trailed off, looking at her tenderly, very worried, very dangerous. "My mother told me stories about them."

She caressed the wrinkled cheeks of her terrible fallen angel with cool hands of clear water. "Help me find her," she said, numb, wanting only the color of Mira's eyes.

They ran, and she found her way through the smoke after a while. The girl's dorms rose before them, half the building smoke-stained and ugly but still standing, the other half entirely gone, butchered into a haphazard pile of bricks and beams and ash.

"My room," she cried. It was gone. "Mira-" Mira couldn't be gone. It couldn't be. Olivia fell to her shining knees, burned craters into the scorched lawn with her tears.

"Look for her." Midori crouched down beside her, eye flashing nervously in every direction, but the teachers were busy leading the students to safety, and no one bothered to squint through the smoke for the source of the kaleidoscope of light. Luck was with them, for now, so far behind enemy lines.

"What?" she managed. The demon raven cawed impatiently, and she winced, claws digging into the soil as the smell of blood rose thick and delicious to her nostrils.

"Do that soul thing, the one you told me about. Just because you can't see her with your eyes doesn't mean she's not there," he said.

She closed her eyes, and her quivering soul pleaded with everything it had, but nothing answered for an endless time. Then something reached for her, stretched thin in the ponderous darkness, and she crested back to consciousness with a roar. Midori dived out of the way as she crashed into the rubble of the dorms, a tsunami, draining the fountains and the clouds and the deep earth for water to bully stone away from her buried weapon. Someone came dashing up to Midori, a pretty woman with auburn pigtails, but he threw out an arm and told her to wait or another student would die, and she listened, though her curious eyes traced the tattoo on his arm. After a while, a man with carrot-colored hair came trudging up, holding the hand of a furious woman with black hair and broken glasses, and then a few older kids Midori guessed to be students or recent graduates.

"Little Jennifer Mason?" said the orange-haired man, scrubbing soot from his face.

"Yes," said Midori recklessly. "Leave her alone or I'll kill you."

"Star Clan playing guardian angel for a witch, huh?" the man said wryly. "Never thought I'd see the day. I just killed the Clan bastard who did all this, so you know."

Midori loomed as only Midori could do. "He wasn't Clan any longer, and this wasn't done under our orders," he rumbled. "That witch is trying to save her weapon and if you interfere, that poor girl's death will be on your own head." He put a hand on the butt of his gun and blazed at the Academy staff. "If you fancy dying today, try to stop her."

None of them moved, though the dark-haired woman gave an offended sort of sniff. "If you think you can get take out the god of Death, then you Star Clan are crazier than we thought," she said dryly, fiddling with the ruined frames of her glasses. Midori turned and realized with no little shock that the tall, spiky black shape from nowhere, wobbling placidly next to him, was Lord Death.

His hand tightened on his gun as Olivia gave another keening yelp, spraying light across all their faces as she pushed aside another gigantic chunk of concrete with a cresting wave, broken wrist flapping nauseatingly with each forceful push she made. Lord Death just tilted his mask a little, held up a cheerful hand, and said, quite calmly, "Yo."

"Don't you dare touch her," Midori snarled, and it appeared that Lord Death hadn't met another creature who could look him in the eye for quite some time, because that mask rippled into an expression of mild suprise.

"I didn't intend to, Star Clan," the god said, returning his gaze to Olivia. "All I want right now is for Miss Mirabelle to come out of that destruction alive."

Uneasy truce reached for the moment, they waited as the dust slowly settled along with the sun. The kirin witch in front of them leaked light and acid tears as she fought, and her cries were so heartbreaking that the bespectacled teacher ended up crying quietly for a while into the neck of the orange-haired one. Lord Death settled into an unnatural sort of stillness.

After a while, Midori turned to him and said spitefully, "You're a god. Why don't you get that girl out?"

"Ah. It appears Mira needs your little Cascadia spy- yes, we know, the bullet we pulled from Mira bore a serial number that traced to them. I'm not a god for nothing, you know."

"_I'm_ the one who figured that out," the woman with auburn pigtails protested, red lips pursing.

Lord Death made a sound suspiciously like a chuckle, and flashed a peace sign, bobbling gently back and forth. "Well, let's just say that I don't think Mira could hold on for much longer if I interefered. It's only Jennifer's soul that's kept her going for this long."

"Her name is Olivia," Midori hissed.

"Pretty name, that," the god returned equably. Nonetheless, as outwardly unaffected as he seemed, Midori noticed that one stray edge of his ragged cloak-like covering was tapping at the ground, quite as a normal man might nervously tap their shoe.

Then Olivia went quiet, and they all lifted their heads, an audience of enemies united in mutual apprehension. Olivia was a witch no longer. She was a filthy, bloody, tiny teenage girl, and she was cradling a blackened knife to her chest. A heartbeat later, the knife was a girl, dark-skinned with eyes like the ocean, and the teachers moved forward, slowly, together.

Midori, casting one last suspicious glance at the impassive mask of the god, followed. "You saved me," the knife-girl wept, throwing her arms around Olivia's neck. She was panting, scraped and bruised; Midori realized with slow horror that she must have been in her knife form, all these hours, trapped under half a building in a space too small to turn human. Claustrophobia wrenched cruelly at his gut.

"Mira, I'm sorry," Olivia said, over and over, and it was apparent that her eyes couldn't see anything in the world right now except the other girl. They clung together, clutching, foreheads pressed together.

"How did you do it?" Mira said, hands cradling Olivia's face, gently, even as fat tears trickled down her own.

"I- I-" Olivia shut her eyes, very tight, and crushed Mira to her with force that looked almost painful.

"Wait," Mira said slowly. "Really. How did you move all that by yourself?" She pulled away a little, frowning.

Olivia said nothing. Mira looked around, took in the destruction, the ice still glinting on some rocks, the water everywhere, her own soaked clothes, and then the teachers and the god, approaching with measured steps and faces like stone. "The mirror," she breathed then, and Midori didn't understand that reference, but he did understand when Mira dragged herself upright and said furiously, "Show me! Show me, you witch!"

Olivia flinched, but then her skin turned to glimmering slickness and her eyes to abalone. Antlers like perfect, clear ice turned gleaming red in the last light of the sunset as she cried, tears sizzling when they hit the ground. "I'm so sorry," she said, face twisting.

Mira turned away, and the teachers took that moment to clamber over the stones flung aside by Olivia's love to take their student. Midori did the same, gathering his little witch up in his arms and ignoring the way her tears burned his skin. "Let us go," he said to Lord Death, cradling Olivia's head as she tried to follow Mira's retreating shape with her luminous eyes.

"Go quickly, then, and don't forget my mercy today," said Lord Death, in a voice that shook the wounded earth, and all the shadows around them deepened. Midori ran. White Star was waiting far outside the city in the cool blue sands of the nighttime desert, and he took over, young arms tight around Olivia as she curled up on his lap and wept, while Midori drove the stolen dune buggy away.

* * *

**A/N:** Whew! Okay! So that's done- but there's a sequel on the way, don't worry. After all, Olivia still has to get knocked up and give birth to our favorite blue haired bandit, right? (Is that spoiler? Idk, I was afraid no one would read this if they didn't think it involved characters they actually knew and liked, haha). So I hope you enjoyed reading!

Also, there are links in my profile to the rest of the resbang stories and also the AWESOME art that was made specifically for this story. :)


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